Senate GOP plan would sell millions of acres of Western public land
Senate Republicans have proposed selling off up to 3.3 million acres of federally owned land in 11 Western states, according to a draft legislative text offered as part of their spending and tax cut bill, prompting an outcry from conservationists and Democratic lawmakers.
According to a budget blueprint released Wednesday evening by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the federal government would be required to sell off between 2.2 and 3.3 million acres of land owned by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service over the next five years.
The proposal stipulates that the sold land will have to be used to develop housing or 'community development needs,' which it said could be defined by the secretaries of the Interior or Agriculture departments. The 11 states that would be affected by the proposal are Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement Wednesday that the draft legislative text would turn 'federal liabilities into taxpayer value, while making housing more affordable for hardworking American families.'
Current law allows BLM to sell off land in some instances, such as in a specific ring around Las Vegas, at a discount if it's developed for affordable housing. But the push to scale up these land sales has spurred pushback from not just Democratic lawmakers and environmentalists but also some House Republicans, who managed to block a similar provision from being included last month in the House's tax and spending bill.
Democrats and several conservation groups sharply criticized the Senate blueprint, warning that it could deprive future generations of public access to public land and suggesting much of the land sold might not be used for affordable housing.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (New Mexico), the panel's top Democrat, accused Republicans of 'taking up a sledgehammer' in a 'fire sale' of public lands, in a statement Wednesday. 'We all lose access to public lands forever, jeopardizing our local economies and who we are as a nation.'
In a statement, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership said it opposed the proposed forced sale, arguing that the budget reconciliation bill was not the right process for public-land sales of this scale.
'The Senate proposal sets an arbitrary acreage target and calls for the disposal of up to six times more land than was proposed in early versions of the House budget reconciliation bill,' said Joel Pedersen, the group's president and CEO. 'If passed, sportsmen and women would lose access to large tracts of public land.'
If enacted into law, the draft text would require the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service to sell between 0.5 and 0.75 percent of the 438 million acres of land that they own collectively. It does not include the sale of land with existing grazing rights, along with federally protected lands such as national parks, monuments and wildlife refuges.
The committee projected that the land sales would generate between $5 billion and $10 billion of income between fiscal years 2025 and 2034, citing an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office.
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