Okay. And the three and a two and a...

Hey there. Welcome to Playbook Daily Briefing and happy Wednesday. I'm Playbook editor Mike DeBonis and I'm here with Playbook reporter Eli Oaken. Hey, Eli.

Hey, Mike. And we're nearing the end of the year here and it means it's big spending bill time on Capitol Hill.

The Senate introduced a 4,000-plus page omnibus spending bell early Tuesday morning,

and Eli's been very busy unpacking what's inside.

Eli, what is the most interesting thing you have found so far?

Well, you know, there's a difference between most important and most interesting.

Obviously, there's huge amounts of spending in this bill for the military and for all kinds of crucial policy

priorities that Democrats and Republicans spent a long time haggling over. But some of the really

oddball under the radar policy matters, I think, are the most interesting to kind of dig into.

So the Maine delegation is

very excited about a bill that got tacked onto the omnibus that protects their lobster industry,

which environmentalists in Maine who are concerned about the right whale population are not so happy

about. Yeah, so explain this a little bit. I learned about this just a few, probably a couple months ago,

when Jared Golden, who's one of the two members of the House for Maine,

really criticized the Biden administration for this whale protection rule

that basically is decimated the lobster industry.

Why are whales and lobsters in conflict?

So the question is how much the federal government can regulate

lobstermen in Maine from using fishing lines that can sometimes entangle right whales. You know,

activists want the government to be able to protect the whales more and the lobstermen want less

regulation and the lobstermen want out. Yeah, it came down to the whales versus the lobstermen want less regulation and the lobstermen went out.

...