Helen B. Hernandez, who drives 150 miles a day back and forth from her home in the Antelope Valley to her job in downtown Los Angeles, shares something in common with many long-haul commuters in Southern California: She keeps a sharp eye on gas prices.

"When (prices) went up to a dollar and a half, everybody was talking about it and nobody liked it--it really ate a hole in your pocket," says Hernandez, a mechanic for the Southern California Rapid Transit District.

But the budget deficit that President-elect Bill Clinton is about to inherit seems to bulge with each recalculation and pressure is growing to find new ways to pay down the debt.

On Sunday, Vice President-elect Al Gore said in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press" that a gasoline tax hike "has not even been discussed as an issue." Yet other recent reports have said that momentum is quietly building among presidential advisers to raise taxes on the nation's primary transportation fuel.

One compelling argument: Every 1-cent increase in the gas tax brings more than $1 billion a year to the federal Treasury.

During the presidential campaign, candidates Paul Tsongas called for a gas tax hike of 30 to 50 cents phased in over 10 years and Ross Perot proposed a 50-cent hike over five years; Clinton denounced a 50-cent rise as "back breaking" to consumers.

Since then, however, the National Commission on the Environment, a nonpartisan group on which several Clinton advisers have served, has proposed a $1 increase over five years. One commission member, Alice Rivlin, who Clinton has named as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, advised the President-elect during last month's economic conference in Arkansas that he "should be looking at taxing the things we don't want to have happen, pollution and excessive use of energy, as an alternative to taxing the things we do want. . . . That means, perhaps, gas taxes."

Numerous other advisers are urging higher gas taxes to not only lower the debt but also to conserve energy and reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

Predictably, any gas price hike would meet opposition in Southern California, the world's largest gasoline market, where private automobiles account for 95% of all travel by ground transportation, according to the Highway Users Federation.