Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., today responded to President Obama’s criticism of the recently released Republican jobs plan in the Senate by throwing back a fiery criticism of Obama’s jobs bus tour this week.

“I’ve never seen an uglier bus than the Canadian one he’s traveling around on – a Canadian bus touting American jobs. So — and one of the reasons why Americans and I and my colleagues are a bit skeptical, because we’ve seen this movie before,” McCain said on the Senate floor this afternoon.

McCain questioned whether it is appropriate for Obama to be traveling on the taxpayers dime, saying the president is “clearly campaigning,” because he’s visiting areas of the country “that have a lot to do in the view of many with the upcoming electoral calendar.”

In Asheville, N.C. today, the first stop of a three-day bus tour that will bring the president to Virginia as well,  Obama said the Senate Republicans’ jobs plan amounted to little more than a plan to “gut regulations…to let Wall Street do whatever it wants….to drill more…(And) to repeal health care reform. That’s their jobs plan.”

Responded McCain, “I was somewhat taken aback since the president and his spokesperson had billed his trip as a taxpayer paid visit. And in his remarks, the president was very strongly condemning of the plan that we have put forward. In fact, remember, my colleagues and friends, the president made these remarks on a taxpayer-paid-for, riding in a Canadian bus, visit for the next three days.”

McCain defended the Republicans’ plan,  released last Thursday, saying it is a “commonsense alternative” to the Democratic plan. He called President Obama’s plan just another stimulus.

“It didn’t work. It added to our debt and deficit, and we lost jobs,” McCain said.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, McCain’s famous “Straight Talk Express” bus also bore the imprint of  Prevost, the same Canadian company that designed the shell/chassis of Obama’s government-owned bus.

In August the U.S. Secret Service said it selected Prevost because it’s the only company that made a bus large enough for its security needs. The agency then had it built out and outfitted by the American company Hemphill Bros.