Brian Lair on WNYC. So before the membership break, if you're just joining us, we heard from

Congressman Frank Pallone in part one of our Health and Climate Tuesday section of the show.

We focus mostly on health.

The Medicaid cuts, the committee he sits on is considering that Republican leaders hope to finalize by the end of this week.

But he also touched on some climate provisions in the bill, which his energy and commerce committee.

He's the ranking Democrat also has to vote on.

We'll dig deeper on those now, including this one that the congressman singled out that really blew his mind near the end of the segment.

The thing that really drove me crazy was that they said that if an oil, if an oil gas company or an LNG company wanted to get approval, they could pay somewhere between a million and $10 million fine, not fine, fee with their

application. And if they did that, then they would not have to go through any environmental review.

Really?

You could buy your way out of an environmental review.

Congressman Frank Pallone from part one of Health and Climate Tuesdays there.

For part two, we welcome Kelsey Brueger, who covers energy and climate politics on Capitol Hill for Politico's E&E News, Energy and Environment News.

Kelsey, thanks for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Hi, thanks for having me.

Can we just start with that soundbite from Congressman Polone?

Is the House really considering something that blatant,il fuel permits with no environmental review for a fee?

Had you heard of that before?

Sure.

So, yeah, there are provisions in this mega bill on permitting, which attaches a fee, which,

you know, to do this reconciliation package, policies have to have this budget nexus. So that's where this fee comes in.

And so, yeah, there are provisions that would accelerate environmental review for massive projects to about six months to a year.

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