Today, during a town hall meeting in Fresno, California, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) advocated boosting funding for public transportation. Replying to a question about increasing fuel prices, McCain joked that public transportation was the only issue “we agree on.”

But the senator’s sudden embrace of public transportation contradicts his vocal support for the gas-tax holiday. In fact, according to the American Public Transportation Association, McCain’s proposal to suspend the gas-tax “runs counter to the public demand for more public transportation“:

The truth is that we need the federal gas tax to pay for the much needed highway and public transportation infrastructure. Do we really want our bridges to fall down? No. Do we want to see bus routes and train lines cut? No. Americans are used to their independence and want their transportation systems to not only be maintained, but improved and expanded.

McCain’s gas-tax proposal “would eliminate $1.4 billion of federal funding for public transportation and severely restrict the industry’s ability to add and improve transit services for a growing number of Americans.”

It seems that the gas tax holiday is just one more issue that “is not something” McCain has “understood as well” he should.

Yesterday, on CNN Late Edition, McCain Senior Economic Adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin claimed that John McCain’s tax plan didn’t include tax cuts for the rich:

BLITZER: But is this true, the suggestion that [Barack Obama] saying you want to give a huge tax break to those Americans making $2.8 million a year and more, that’s true, right?

HOLTZ-EAKIN: No…Mr. Obama is talking about tax cuts for the wealthy. They’re not anywhere. What John McCain would do is reduce the corporate tax rates that’s sending jobs that have pension benefits, health benefits and important security for Americans, he’s cutting rates.

Watch it:

Holtz-Eakin is being wildly misleading. A recent analysis from the non-partisan Tax Policy Center found that McCain’s plan, which includes a dramatic AMT revision, a corporate tax cut, and a doubling of the dependent exemption, “would primarily benefit those with very high incomes, almost all of whom would receive large tax cuts that would, on average, raise their after-tax incomes by more than twice the average for all households.” In other words, it’s a huge tax cut for the rich:

Another beneficiary of McCain’s plan: the McCains themselves. A recent paper by the Center for American Progress Action Fund found that John and Cindy McCain would save $373,429 under McCain’s tax plan.

Senator Obama, on the other hand, “offers much larger tax breaks to low- and middle-income taxpayers and would increase taxes on high-income taxpayers.”

As for the supposed benefits McCain’s rate cut for corporations would have, the Tax Policy Center found that the “larger future deficits [the cut would create] would reduce and could completely offset any positive effect.”

McCain’s reckless tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans, which he has still not explained how he would pay for, would create the largest deficits in 25 years and the largest debt since World War Two.

As Holtz-Eakin himself said, “you have to pay for that somehow or you’re George Bush III.“