WASHINGTON – Sens. John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton have jumped on the bandwagon to suspend the 18.4 cents per gallon federal excise tax on gasoline during the summer driving season. However, to many economists and other experts, such a short gasoline tax holiday is an idea that wouldn’t help U.S. drivers much at all, Reuters reports.

President Bush said last week that he would consider a fuel-tax holiday, but Energy Secretary Sam Bodman said that a suspension would bring only “marginal” benefits to consumers. “I think [a gasoline-tax holiday would bring] a small, temporary reduction in prices,” said Bodman.

The main reason motorists would see little benefit from such a gasoline tax suspension is that there is no way to guarantee the savings would be passed on at the pump. Besides, cheaper fuel would only increase gasoline consumption, which drives up prices.

“A gasoline tax holiday is a mirage of price relief for consumers,” said Daniel Weiss, an energy expert at the Center for American Progress.

NACS said its fuel retailing members would have trouble putting the relief into practice. With wholesale gasoline prices changing sometimes four or five times daily, it would be hard for stations to reduce pump prices by 18.4 cents a gallon, said NACS Vice President of Government Relations John Eichberger. “We know what’s going to happen. Everybody and their mother is going to cry ‘price gouging,’” he said.

Such a gas-tax holiday would likely create a run on supplies, long lines and possible fuel shortages as many consumers might wait to fill up until the first day the tax was scheduled to be eliminated, with the same thing happening toward the end of the summer, said Eichberger.

“So everybody goes to the gas station ... as they try to capitalize on the low-priced gas,” he said. “It’s a temporary problem, but it’s going to be a problem.”

Also contributing to the potential problems would be many gasoline stations delaying delivery of gasoline to keep inventories low before the tax holiday so they would not have too much higher-priced fuel. But that strategy would make gasoline supplies tight. “You’re going to have a rush of customers at a time that retailers have reduced their inventory. You’re going to have stations running out of gas,” Eichberger said.