At the same time, McCain became a vocal critic of government subsidies, particularly for oil and gas producers. In a debate, he derided the 2003 energy bill for "increasing our dependence on conventional fuels" and was one of six GOP senators to oppose it.
But the senator's legislative work on energy and climate change is also full of contradictions. McCain -- who argues the federal government should not be "picking favorites" -- has routinely backed federal subsidies for some energy producers but not others.
While McCain has talked tough about giveaways for oil companies, for example, he has only occasionally challenged the industry.
In 2003 and 2005, McCain criticized his colleagues for giving tax breaks to oil producers. "It doesn't make fiscal or common sense," he said in one debate, "to provide billions of taxpayer subsidies to encourage the production of energy by companies that are already gaining tremendous riches at today's sky-high oil and gas prices."
He has also acted to protect the industry's bottom line. In 1999, McCain backed efforts to prevent the Interior Department from collecting more royalties from oil companies drilling on public land.
The department wanted payments to reflect the market price of oil, a change that could have boosted receipts by an estimated $60 million a year or more.
Six years later, after rejecting offshore drilling, he voted for legislation that opened up large sections of the Gulf of Mexico to exploration, a major industry priority.
Holtz-Eakin said McCain believed that states should have the authority to decide whether there was drilling along their coastlines. (In contrast, McCain voted to deny governors authority to veto liquefied natural gas terminals in their states.)
McCain announced two weeks ago that he favored more oil exploration off the nation's coasts to bring down the cost of gasoline. "We must deal with the here and now," he said.
On his recent energy tour, McCain also called for 45 new nuclear plants by 2030, a goal he is prepared to back with billions of federal dollars.
That too is a change for the four-term senator. Earlier in his congressional career, McCain was a consistent opponent of subsidies for nuclear power, voting five times in the 1990s against taxpayer aid for research on new-generation nuclear reactors. As recently as 2003, McCain opposed federal loan guarantees to help the nuclear industry finance new plants.
