We had fun ridiculing the idea of suspending the gasoline tax for the summer, but the gas tax holiday was minor mischief compared with the newest idea for dealing with the financial market meltdown: a two year holiday on capital gains taxes.

Senator McCain proposed today to suspend the 18.4 cents per gallon federal excise tax on gasoline between Memorial Day and Labor Day this year. For a moment, forget about whether encouraging fossil fuel burning makes sense during a time of global warming, whether we should raid the highway trust fund when bridges are collapsing for lack of maintenance, or the disconnect between the proposal to cut gasoline taxes and the candidates’ endorsement of “cap-and-trade” limits that would raise gasoline prices.

Why is it that the biggest problems always seem to encourage the worst possible solutions? The latest case in point: The Senate's housing bill, grandly titled “The Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008.”