Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) sponsored an amendment to H.R. 3746, the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, to strike a provision mandating approval of permits for the completion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a fracked gas pipeline that threatens our climate, public health, environmental justice, and the region’s land, water, and ecosystems. At a time when we should be rapidly moving away from fossil fuels, this fossil gas pipeline would lock us into decades of 90,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually, which is the equivalent of 26 coal-fired power plants or 19,000 passenger cars. The company pushing the pipeline has already racked up millions of dollars in fines for nearly 400 water quality violations, posing a threat to drinking water and to public health and safety more broadly in the communities that lie along its path, which include low-wealth, Indigenous and communities of color already overburdened by pollution. In addition to the risks of the pipeline itself, the inclusion of this provision blindly mandating approval of a project and shielding it from judicial review in a completely unrelated must-pass bill set a dangerous precedent that allowed Congress to circumvent and thereby undermine crucial environmental review and community engagement processes required by congressionally-passed statutes. On June 1, the Senate rejected the Kaine amendment by a vote of 30-69. The Senate passed H.R. 3746 on June 1, which included the Mountain Valley Pipeline approval, and on June 3, the president signed it into law.