Gas prices hurt but tax holiday no solution: poll

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sixty nine percent of Americans see gasoline prices as a serious problem for their families but only 41 percent favor a temporary repeal of the gasoline tax as proposed by presidential candidates John McCain and Hillary Clinton, a poll released on Thursday said.

In the Quinnipiac University Poll, 57 percent of respondents said they were cutting back on household spending because of high gas prices; 61 percent were driving less and 39 percent had changed summer vacation plans.

However, those surveyed consider a summer gas tax "holiday" a bad idea by 49 percent to 41 percent.

Republican McCain and Democrat Clinton proposed suspending the tax of 18.4 cents per gallon on gasoline and 24.4 cents on diesel fuel for the summer.

The other major candidate, Democrat Barack Obama, dismissed the idea as a gimmick.

"Rising gas prices are more than just an abstract worry. Americans say they've cut back on their household spending and on how much they drive," Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said in a statement.

"But the political quick fix -- a gasoline tax holiday for the summer -- has more opposition than support. Imagine that: American voters opposed to a tax cut."

Thirty-five percent of those surveyed said oil companies were most to blame for rising gasoline prices; 23 percent blamed U.S. President George W. Bush; 19 percent blamed oil producing countries; 14 percent said it was a result of normal supply and demand pressures and 3 percent blamed drivers of gas-guzzling cars.

The poll surveyed 1,745 registered voters nationwide from May 8-12 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.4 percentage points.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta, editing by Alan Elsner)