Senate Democrats tried out a new catch phrase Wednesday to sell their global warming bill: pollution reduction and investment, or PRI.

But it's just another name for cap and trade, a term derided by Republican critics as "cap and tax" because it will increase energy prices and which Democratic polls have shown faring poorly with voters.

"This bill is nothing more than a massive energy tax deliberately masked by climate change," Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said in a prepared statement.

The rebranding is an indication of the uphill battle the climate bill -- which would cap greenhouse gases and also allow industries to buy emission allowances -- faces in the Senate.

A number of Democratic senators, currently entangled in the heated health care debate, said they continued to have trouble with key elements of the climate legislation. Several said it would be a huge challenge -- perhaps impossible -- to try to get a climate bill passed this year.

The idea to remake cap and trade into pollution reduction and investment came from Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., author of the bill unveiled Wednesday. He came up with it about a month ago to refocus attention on what the bill would do, not how it goes about doing it.

"Cap and trade doesn't mean anything to people, " Kerry said in an interview, insisting that "this is an actual description of what's happening here."

At a news conference on the bill, cap and trade, the legislation's centerpiece, got nary a mention. Instead, the buzz words were "national security," "economic growth" and "jobs from clean energy development." Kerry and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the other key sponsor, entitled it The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act.

"We are here and we introduced this legislation because of one word -- security," said Kerry. "It is time to reinvent the way Americans use energy."

The words "cap and trade," "global warming" and "climate" also didn't appear in a White House statement responding to the bill's introduction.

"With the draft legislation ... we are one step closer to putting America in control of our energy future and making America more energy independent," Obama said. "My administration is deeply committed to passing a bill that creates new American jobs and the clean energy incentives that foster innovation."

Cap and trade is still the centerpiece of the Senate bill, as it is in the House-passed version. Under cap and trade, emissions of heat-trapping gases from power plants, refineries and factories would face increasingly more stringent limits, or caps. Companies could then invest in pollution-reducing technologies, or buy and sell permits to meet the cap -- the trade portion.

The bill calls for a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020, and an 80 percent cut by mid-century.

Environmentalists said Wednesday that all along they had been touting the energy security and jobs that would come from the bill.

"We don't even talk about it in terms of cap and trade," said Anna Aurilio, director of Environment America. "Cap and trade is a very confusing term and it is not accurate. What we are doing is reducing pollution."

Republican critics, who frequently have referred to the House-passed bill as "cap and tax" maintaining it would lead to soaring energy prices, weren't about to join in on the rhetorical shift.

"These are fancy, complicated words for high-cost energy," said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., a strong critic of climate legislation, said Kerry and Boxer were making "an earnest attempt ... to refashion the obvious" but that they "produced yet another massive energy tax that will destroy jobs (and) raise electricity and gasoline prices."

Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., called the Democratic bill a "cap and trade scheme" that "would suppress our economic recovery, cost jobs across our economy and result in higher prices on everything from energy to food for every single American."

Democratic supporters reject the GOP's dire economic claims, arguing that the bill contains measures to mitigate the cost to consumers by promoting energy efficiency and to develop alternative energy sources and "green" jobs.

Boxer cited a report released this week by economists at the University of California claiming the House-passed cap and trade bill could create as many as 1.9 million jobs and increase household incomes by as much as $1,175 a year. "We know clean energy is the ticket for strong stable economic growth," she said.

Barrasso cited a recent Heritage Foundation study that indicated a similar energy bill passed by the House of Representatives in June would cost 1.9 million American jobs by 2012 increasing to 2.5 million jobs lost by 2035.

"In just three years, a family of four will pay an extra $426 each year in energy costs. Over time, that same family will pay an additional $1,241 in energy costs," said Barrasso.

Others say those figures are not correct.

Josh Freed, senior policy advisor of the Clean Energy Initiative, said the most reliable figures come from the Congressional Budget Office, which suggest the average cost per family will be $170 per year, including gasoline and all utilities.

"The opposition to energy reform are not offering any solutions," said Freed. "The opposition to reform wants us to stick to the past and reduce out ability to compete in the world."

Freed said Wyoming is one of those all-of-the-above states that stands to benefit from an energy bill that promotes the development of renewable energy sources as well as carbon capture technologies to keep fossil fuels in the mix.

While coal will likely make up a smaller percentage of the U.S. fuel mix, the industry won't have to ship fewer tons.

"As capacity and productivity increases and more electric cars come on line, there's going to be more demand for electricity," said Freed. "If carbon capture and storage takes off, coal use may continue to grow.

"We're not going to get any of that if energy reform doesn't take place, and we'll be forced to buy that technology from overseas because those countries are moving forward with it."