Dem Senator: Carbon tax may fund "relocation for workers" due to "significant dislocation impacts."

Democrat Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) has been trying to convince Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) to impose a massive carbon tax on the American people that will raise the cost of heating and cooling, grocery bills, transportation, and other basic functions of life.

But it looks like Romney is wisely steering clear of Coons’ harmful bill, based on comments Coons made on a DC stage last week.

Coons admitted the tax will raise household energy costs and said the carbon tax dollars extracted from the American people may fund “relocation for workers” due to “significant dislocation impacts.”

Coons said his upcoming bill is “likely to be Democrat only.”

Coons said:

“So just broadly speaking, the bill that Senator Flake and I introduced in the last Congress was a complete rebate bill. The bill that I am introducing soon in the Senate, which is at this point, likely to be Democrat only, takes significant pieces of the revenue, and invests it in infrastructure construction, in clean energy R&D, and in transition effects. Recognizing that a rapid transition away from a carbon-intensive manufacturing and extraction community in states — like for example, West Virginia, or Kentucky — will have significant dislocation impacts. And the political reality is that in order to get support for an industry-wide and an economy-wide carbon fee, we will likely invest, have to invest proactively in retaining and retraining in the impacts on the local economy that both go to individual households in terms of strengthening their ability to afford higher energy costs and in skills, and potentially even relocation for workers.”

Coons shared a stage with the one congressional Republican foolish enough to endorse a carbon tax: Florida congressman Francis Rooney. Rooney twisted the knife by saying: “There is not a constitutional right necessarily to get a job where you are.”

Rooney’s bill — H.R. 763 — imposes a large, continually ratcheting national energy tax, allowing politicians to raise taxes without ever having to vote. It would raise taxes on Social Security benefits and require a large bureaucracy to implement and run. The well-funded carbon tax group pushing Rooney’s bill — Citizens’ Climate Lobby — was caught on tape admitting carbon tax cost and complexity is “something that we at CCL can tend to soft-pedal.”

It’s no wonder 75 conservative groups wrote a letter to congress stating: “We oppose any carbon tax.”