WASHINGTON, May 2 (UPI) -- Sens. John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are now arguing over how to cut record oil prices, but none of them has any credible answers.

The soaring global cost of oil and record prices per gallon at the gas station for U.S. consumers is emerging as a King Kong in the 2008 presidential election campaign. Global prices are now around an extraordinary $110 a gallon. In the past week prices in some U.S. cities reached a record $4 a gallon, and the one thing as sure as death and taxes is that things are going to get even worse.

There are already U.S. federal and state taxes on gasoline, but they are minuscule, averaging out at less than 50 cents a barrel compared with national gas taxes around four times as high in major European countries.

McCain, R-Ariz., wanted to bring shorter-term relief to drivers around the United States by declaring a short "gas tax holiday" over the summer starting on Memorial Day and ending on Labor Day -- the traditional dates when the American summer season starts and ends. Clinton, D-N.Y., agrees. But a caucus of democratic senators on Capitol Hill killed the idea stone dead this week, and its effect would have been minimal anyway.

The issue has split Democratic Party leaders. Clinton's old ally, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., a passionate environmentalist from San Francisco, has blasted the idea as far too little and ineffectual. Obama, D-Ill., eager to take the campaign spotlight off his 20-year association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, opposed it, too. He wants to tax the profits of oil-producing companies. But all that idea has ever done is cut oil production, driving prices at the pump even higher.