Speaker 1: Welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast. Today we have with
Speaker 1: us the administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency, also
Speaker 1: known as the EPA, Secretary, Lee Zelden, Secretary, Welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's great to be back with you, Tutor.
Speaker 1: I know where I'm so excited because this is like
Speaker 1: a totally new role for you. We had you on
Speaker 1: here before now, and I've worked with you throughout the campaign.
Speaker 1: I saw you out there every day, and I feel
Speaker 1: like every time I saw you, if I was on
Speaker 1: a zoom with you, you were in the car. So you
Speaker 1: definitely you definitely earned this post. I just want you
Speaker 1: to know because we saw how hard working you were
Speaker 1: when you were campaigning, but also just what you've done
Speaker 1: since it's this entire administration just went off running. As
Speaker 1: soon as they got their posts, they went out running,
Speaker 1: and you came to Michigan. So tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about what that was like, because I think most
Speaker 1: people know the story of Flint and the water crisis here,
Speaker 1: and I think it's meaningful to the folks here in
Speaker 1: the state that you came here first.
Speaker 3: I wanted to get to Flint as soon as possible,
Speaker 3: and last Thursday, I was in Flint and Arbor. In Flint,
Speaker 3: they've been operating under an emergency order now for about
Speaker 3: a decade or so, and so much has been done
Speaker 3: to improve infrastructure to respond to this crisis, and it's
Speaker 3: just so amazing to see how much progress has been
Speaker 3: made that all of America was watching, and the residents
Speaker 3: of Flint went through a lot to get to this moment.
Speaker 3: And this is a point in time where we should
Speaker 3: be nervous about the future as if levels of government
Speaker 3: are going to disengage. It's clear that that engagement is
Speaker 3: going to be staying for a very long time. The
Speaker 3: federal EPA is going to be engaged in Flint for a.
Speaker 2: Very long time. This moment is a moment for celebration.
Speaker 3: This is a moment of a great progress and the
Speaker 3: water quality is amazing right.
Speaker 1: Now, and it is a time for celebration. Also, I
Speaker 1: think it is meaningful to the folks there because that's
Speaker 1: not typically a city that goes red. It doesn't go
Speaker 1: for the Republican and I think there was some concern
Speaker 1: across the country that once the President got into office
Speaker 1: that he would say we're going to ignore the blue areas,
Speaker 1: and this being one of the first places that you visited.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to reiterate very meaningful and we here
Speaker 1: in the state of Michigan are very appreciative that you
Speaker 1: came out here. But I want to get into some
Speaker 1: of the other things that you're doing, because you're kind
Speaker 1: of on the front line of doge in what you're
Speaker 1: cutting out, because there has been a massive amount of
Speaker 1: waste that's gone through the EPA, and I think it's
Speaker 1: kind of easy to get it through the EPA because
Speaker 1: it's that feel good place where all we're doing this
Speaker 1: for the environment, we're taking we're very green. So tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about what you've found.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: EPA has a very important mission and we have a
Speaker 3: lot of amazing people who work here who want to
Speaker 3: ensure that there's clean air, land, and water for Americans
Speaker 3: all across the country. And we don't just terminate as
Speaker 3: you just point out your question about Flint. Doesn't matter
Speaker 3: whether you're from a red state, a blue state, of
Speaker 3: purple state where we're right now in Los Angeles with
Speaker 3: the agency's largest wildfire response ever where in East Palestine, Ohio,
Speaker 3: Western North Carolina. We just got a mission assignment in Kentucky,
Speaker 3: what is important is that we do it as efficientally and.
Speaker 2: Effectively as possible.
Speaker 3: And when I was going through the Senate confirmation process,
Speaker 3: there was a video that came out of somebody who
Speaker 3: was working as a political appointee here at the EPA
Speaker 3: talking about how they were throwing gold bars off the Titanic,
Speaker 3: trying to get billions of dollars out the door prior
Speaker 3: to inauguration day.
Speaker 2: So these senators were asking.
Speaker 3: Me, if you're confirmed, are you going to make it
Speaker 3: a top priority to get answers as to what he's
Speaker 3: talking about. I said absolutely, And as soon as I
Speaker 3: was confirmed, working with my team, we set out to
Speaker 3: find where the gold bars were that he was talking about,
Speaker 3: and we found twenty billion dollars parked at a bank
Speaker 3: just outside of government. The issue was that the second
Speaker 3: half of twenty twenty four is that they had tens
Speaker 3: of billions of dollars here at the EPA, and they
Speaker 3: even have the ability to get it out, but they
Speaker 3: wanted to get it out before inauguration, so they put
Speaker 3: it at the bank. There was a financial agent agreement
Speaker 3: with Treasury that was tying EPA's hands behind its back.
Speaker 3: There was an account control agreement with EPA where EPA
Speaker 3: was voluntary voluntarily tying its hands behind its back, and
Speaker 3: a lot of self dealing and conflicts of interest. There's
Speaker 3: a story that just came out earlier today where somebody
Speaker 3: who was involved in the council involved responsible for putting
Speaker 3: this whole package together, sends twenty million dollars.
Speaker 2: To her employer.
Speaker 3: There was somebody who was the director of the Greenhouse
Speaker 3: Gas Reduction Fund who gave five billion dollars to his
Speaker 3: former employer where he left to enter the Biden administration.
Speaker 3: Ac Abrams's NGO received two billion dollars.
Speaker 2: It's a brand new ngo. They had only received one
Speaker 2: hundred dollars.
Speaker 3: In twenty twenty three, and in twenty twenty four they
Speaker 3: got two billion. So when you read the grant agreement
Speaker 3: to Stacy Abrams's NGO, on page one, it gives them
Speaker 3: twenty one days to distribute two billion dollars, which is
Speaker 3: not the craziest part.
Speaker 2: On page seven, it gives them ninety days to.
Speaker 3: Complete a training called how to develop a budget. Now,
Speaker 3: if you need to complete training on how to develop
Speaker 3: a budget, you should be completing that training before you're
Speaker 3: spending the first dollar and you certainly shouldn't be handed
Speaker 3: two billion dollars up front and given three weeks to
Speaker 3: distribute it. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Speaker 3: We're just scratching a surface here in this conversation. I
Speaker 3: have ensured with our efforts even far beyond this, that
Speaker 3: we've been able to save not just tens of millions,
Speaker 3: but more with certain grants that are not going to
Speaker 3: go out the door, that do not fulfill statutory obligations,
Speaker 3: that do not fulfill the mission, the core mission. And
Speaker 3: it's important for us to be good stewards of the
Speaker 3: tax dollars. That was my pledge to Congress, that's my
Speaker 3: pledge to the American public.
Speaker 1: Well, so let me be clear. I want to reiterate
Speaker 1: what you just said, because here are friends of Biden,
Speaker 1: and that that needs to be made very clear. These
Speaker 1: are friends of Biden. This is a failed gubernatorial candidate
Speaker 1: in Georgia, Stacey Abrams. Failed candidate, but invited to DGA
Speaker 1: events as a governor. She was invited to all of
Speaker 1: the gubernatorial events like she was actually the governor. Stacy
Speaker 1: Abrams was then given her organization was given two billion
Speaker 1: dollars to spend in twenty one days.
Speaker 2: Two billion to spend in twenty one days.
Speaker 1: This is a new organization only ever received one hundred
Speaker 1: dollars into the org clearly not experienced in spending tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of dollars billions of dollars, let alone two
Speaker 1: billion dollars. How much of our taxpayer money has been
Speaker 1: thrown to the friends of the Democrats.
Speaker 3: Well, you're talking about twenty billion dollars that were sent
Speaker 3: to this bank outside of government. That's not the only expenditure.
Speaker 3: There's also money. There's other moneies that EPA was responsible
Speaker 3: for pushing out that I don't believe should have gone out.
Speaker 3: There was fifty million dollars, for example, sent to the
Speaker 3: Climate Justice Alliance. Climate Justice Alligance says the climate justice
Speaker 3: goes through Goz, it goes through a free Palestine. There
Speaker 3: are people who say who they advocate for the term
Speaker 3: environmental justice, talking about how there are communities that have
Speaker 3: been left behind, where there are issues that need to
Speaker 3: be dealt with. I agree that there are communities in
Speaker 3: America that have been left behind that have important environmental
Speaker 3: issues that have to be dealt with. But the problem
Speaker 3: is when in the name of environmental justice instead of
Speaker 3: spending the dollar on actually remediating the environmental issue in
Speaker 3: that community, we are instead sending tens of millions of
Speaker 3: dollars to some group that says the climate justice.
Speaker 2: Goes through a free Palestine.
Speaker 3: I think Americans would want that fifty million dollars to
Speaker 3: be spent. If it can be spent in the name
Speaker 3: of environmental justice, it should be spent remediating issues in
Speaker 3: these communities that have actually been left behind.
Speaker 1: But that's what I mean about waste frauda and an abuse.
Speaker 1: When you look at your organization, I mean, when you
Speaker 1: look at your agency, you have the Environmental Protection Agency
Speaker 1: sending money through Gaza under the guise of environmental justice,
Speaker 1: but it looks a lot like money laundering.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So in the case of Climate Justice Alliance, this is
Speaker 3: an entity here in the US but advocating that the
Speaker 3: path to climate justice goes through a free Palestine. The
Speaker 3: money that went out to the twenty billion dollars that
Speaker 3: we're just talking about, I believe that the funds should
Speaker 3: be returned to government that EPA needs to re establish
Speaker 3: oversight over this. I'll give you one other example. The
Speaker 3: Clean School Bus program gave one hundred and sixty million
Speaker 3: dollars to a Canadian ev school bus company. They then
Speaker 3: declared bankruptcy and they still haven't delivered ninety five million
Speaker 3: dollars worth of school buses to fifty five school districts.
Speaker 3: The money was given up front, the twenty billion dollars
Speaker 3: that we were just talking about, That money was all
Speaker 3: given out upfront. I'm someone who believes that when money
Speaker 3: is given out, it should be tied to performance. That
Speaker 3: the school bus company makes a school bus, and then
Speaker 3: you pay them for the school bus. And if something
Speaker 3: with the negotiation they received some partial payments along the way,
Speaker 3: then okay, we can negotiate. But the idea of giving
Speaker 3: one hundred and sixty million dollars up front, what happens
Speaker 3: if they declare bankruptcy and they still haven't delivered ninety
Speaker 3: five million dollars worth of school buses to fifty five districts,
Speaker 3: which is exactly what happened in this case.
Speaker 1: But how did they declare bankruptcy with that money? That
Speaker 1: money was there to ensure that wouldn't have happened. So
Speaker 1: that's it completely ridiculous. And I hear what you're saying,
Speaker 1: but I gotta tell you. We owned a steel foundry,
Speaker 1: and nobody ever said to me, you know what, I'm
Speaker 1: going to pay you upfront for the job, and I
Speaker 1: hope the castings arrived. I don't know that many people
Speaker 1: in manufacturing that get paid ahead of time. In fact,
Speaker 1: oftentimes you have long payment terms with people like I mean,
Speaker 1: oftentimes we didn't get paid for seventy five days after
Speaker 1: we shipped a product. You've got to be kidding me
Speaker 1: that the government is paying in advance. And I don't
Speaker 1: believe the government is paying American companies like that in advance.
Speaker 1: And I will just say that we had a similar
Speaker 1: situation in ann Arbor where we bought we spent millions
Speaker 1: on a bunch of school buses and guess what. Those
Speaker 1: school buses didn't run come wintertime in Michigan, and it
Speaker 1: was a disaster for the district.
Speaker 2: Kids couldn't get.
Speaker 1: Places, They had to go back to the gas powered buses.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is all, it's all total first.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and your point is absolutely right, And I'm stating
Speaker 3: the same exact thing in the case of using this
Speaker 3: Canadian electric vehicle school bus company as an example. That
Speaker 3: is why we don't give out money. We should not
Speaker 3: be giving out money upfront. It's important that it is
Speaker 3: directly tied to performance and also the way that these
Speaker 3: funds are overseen. If the government is saying that the
Speaker 3: government of the United States is not able to distribute
Speaker 3: tens of billions of dollars, what kind of logic arrives
Speaker 3: at the conclusion that Stacy Abrams's organization would distribute that
Speaker 3: two billion dollars better than the government can and the
Speaker 3: money and listen, it was their words, not mine. They
Speaker 3: were referring it to tossing gold bars off the Titanic,
Speaker 3: And in that video they were also saying that they
Speaker 3: were distributing the money with an eye towards getting themselves
Speaker 3: jobs at the recipient NGOs. And what we're finding is
Speaker 3: a lot of self dealing and conflicts of interest where
Speaker 3: in fact money went to you entities where the people
Speaker 3: who were involved in the process of getting the money
Speaker 3: funded and distributed were benefiting from it as well. I
Speaker 3: have a big problem with that, with that practice that
Speaker 3: should not be allowed. And lastly, I have a problem
Speaker 3: with the concept of money going outside the government and
Speaker 3: going through pass throughs to go through other pass throughs
Speaker 3: to eventually get to a grantee. And in this case,
Speaker 3: once the money went through, so it's only eight primary
Speaker 3: recipients received twenty billion dollars. The account control agreement with
Speaker 3: EPA was only with those eight primary recipients. Once the
Speaker 3: money passed through those eight primary recipients, EPA wasn't even
Speaker 3: a party to the account control agreement.
Speaker 2: And I'll give you one more point.
Speaker 3: And I know it sounds like we're getting a little
Speaker 3: bit in the weeds with some of the terms I'm using.
Speaker 3: There was something in the account control agreement called a.
Speaker 2: Notice of exclusive control.
Speaker 3: If I send to Citybank a notice of exclusive control,
Speaker 3: so EPA would re establish control over the funds.
Speaker 2: It actually triggers new rights, new powers.
Speaker 3: On the part of the grantee, where they then can
Speaker 3: tell the bank, I want you to send my money
Speaker 3: to this other bank. So it's not that I do
Speaker 3: notice of exclusive control and the money is returning to
Speaker 3: the United States government and the taxpayers. It's not even
Speaker 3: that states at City Bank, the grantees have a new
Speaker 3: power to move their money somewhere else.
Speaker 2: And this is all done by design. It's crazy.
Speaker 1: Stick around for more coming up with Administrator Lee Zelden.
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Speaker 2: It blows my mind.
Speaker 1: I know we're at the end of our time together,
Speaker 1: but I just want to say, I want to go
Speaker 1: back for a second to those payment terms, paying in advance.
Speaker 1: I mean, essentially, this must be going on across the
Speaker 1: entire agency, because you just told us that this Stacy
Speaker 1: Abrams organization got two billion dollars and they were told
Speaker 1: spend it in twenty one days. You can't even build
Speaker 1: a relationship in twenty one days. And we never had
Speaker 1: a wee thirty day terms were really good for us
Speaker 1: at our factory. If we got paid thirty days after
Speaker 1: we shipped, pretty standard was sixty days twenty one days.
Speaker 1: They had to spend it all. That means they put everything,
Speaker 1: all their cards out before they even knew who they
Speaker 1: were dealing with or something else very nefarious was going on.
Speaker 2: Right, and that practice ends now. This is a new day.
Speaker 3: We're not going to be providing these grant funds up front,
Speaker 3: and that's one of the reforms that we have. We're
Speaker 3: talking about this clean the Clean school Bus program as
Speaker 3: a five billion dollar program. Four billion dollars of it's
Speaker 3: already been distributed, but a billion of it hasn't been,
Speaker 3: and we're not going to distribute these funds in a
Speaker 3: way that is fronting all the money to these organizations.
Speaker 3: And that's just one example. It's like this across the board,
Speaker 3: and it's an important practice beyond time after we're gone
Speaker 3: or today or the next day and some other agency.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, everyone should be happy to hear that there are
Speaker 1: people that are actually looking at how the taxpayer dollars
Speaker 1: are being spent. I've said for a few weeks now,
Speaker 1: as I've been looking at everything that's coming out with
Speaker 1: DOJE and how we're even spending in the state of Michigan, man,
Speaker 1: politicians are acting like this is play money, but this
Speaker 1: is our money. So we appreciate the fact that you're
Speaker 1: taking it seriously and you're going to make sure you're
Speaker 1: safeguarding where our funds are going and hopefully hopefully fewer
Speaker 1: of our funds are going to go out and the
Speaker 1: American people get to keep more.
Speaker 3: Amen.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Secretaries Leezelden. We appreciate having you
Speaker 1: on today.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Tutor absolutely, and thank.
Speaker 1: You all for joining us on the Tutor Dixon podcast.
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Speaker 1: us next time. Have a blessed day,