Republicans remove language in Trump budget bill to sell public lands in Utah
WASHINGTON — Republicans stripped language to sell off about 11,000 acres of public lands in Utah to help pay for President Donald Trump's massive tax package in a last-minute alteration to the budget framework released on Wednesday night.
The change was revealed in Republicans' manager's amendment, a procedural tool to make key changes to provisions in the bill before it reaches the floor. The amendment was negotiated among rank-and-file Republicans, House GOP leaders, and Trump himself over the last few weeks in order to get all corners of the party on board to advance the president's agenda.
In the manager's amendment that was published just after 9 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, Republican leaders removed language from the budget resolution to greenlight public land sales in Utah and Nevada totaling more than 211,000 acres across the two states.
The original amendment was led by Utah Rep. Celeste Maloy, R-Utah, who drafted the provision upon request from officials in Washington and Beaver counties, who would've facilitated the sale.
'Washington County and Beaver County are landlocked and growing quickly but cannot function because of endless red tape on federal lands,' Maloy told the Deseret News earlier this month. 'At their request, I introduced an amendment to convey, at fair market value, targeted land — land needed by local governments for infrastructure.'
About 63% of Utah's land is owned by the federal government, the most of any state in the country aside from Nevada. The lands that would have been sold make up 'only a third of one percent of federal lands in the state,' according to Maloy.
Maloy told the Deseret News she was informed the language would be stripped from the final bill before it was released.
The proposal was met with pushback from some Republicans who have historically opposed public land sales, such as Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., the co-chairman of the newly created Public Lands Caucus.
'There's a lot of frustration down in the West. I understand that,' Zinke said in response to the amendment earlier this month. 'But I prefer the management scheme. And I give an example as a hotel — if you don't like the management of a hotel, don't sell the hotel. Change the management. That's where I sit on that position.'
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