WASHINGTON — A plan to sell more than 3,200 square miles of federal lands has been ruled out of Republicans’ big tax and spending cut bill after the Senate parliamentarian determined the proposal by Senate Energy Chairman Mike Lee would violate the chamber’s rules.
Lee, a Utah Republican, has proposed selling millions of acres (8.300 square kilometers) of public lands in the West to states or other entities for use as housing or infrastructure. The plan would revive a longtime ambition of Western conservatives to cede lands to local control after a similar proposal failed in the House earlier this year.
Lee’s plan has revealed sharp disagreement among Republicans who support wholesale transfers of federal property to spur development and generate revenue, and other lawmakers — including GOP senators in Montana and Idaho — who are staunchly opposed.
The proposal comes as the Trump administration said Monday it will move to rescind a 2001 rule that blocked logging on national forest lands. The so-called roadless rule has angered Republicans, especially in the West where forests sprawl across vast, mountainous terrain and the logging industry has waned.
Democrats and environmental groups roundly oppose both plans as giveaways to private interests that will threaten clean water and wildlife and block recreation on public lands.
“Democrats will not stand idly by while Republicans attempt to circumvent the rules of (budget) reconciliation in order to sell off public lands to fund tax breaks for billionaires,” said Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee.
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said her constituents want to be able to hike and hunt on public lands, as they have for generations all over the West. “They don’t want these lands to be luxury resorts or golf courses,” she said at a news conference Tuesday.
Lee, in a post on X Monday night, said he would keep trying.
“Housing prices are crushing families and keeping young Americans from living where they grew up. We need to change that,” he wrote, adding that a revised plan would remove all U.S. Forest Service land from possible sale. Sales of sites controlled by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management would be significantly reduced, Lee said, so that only land within 5 miles of population centers could be sold.
Environmental advocates celebrated the ruling late Monday by Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough but cautioned that Lee’s proposal was far from dead.
“This is a victory for the American public, who were loud and clear: Public lands belong in public hands, for current and future generations alike,” said Tracy Stone-Manning, president of The Wilderness Society. “Our public lands are not for sale.”
Carrie Besnette Hauser, president and CEO of the nonprofit Trust for Public Land, called the procedural ruling in the Senate “an important victory in the fight to protect America’s public lands from short-sighted proposals that would have undermined decades of bipartisan work to protect, steward and expand access to the places we all share.”
“But make no mistake: this threat is far from over,” Hauser added. “Efforts to dismantle our public lands continue, and we must remain vigilant as proposals now under consideration,” including plans to roll back the bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act and cut funding for land and water conservation, make their way through Congress, she said.
MacDonough, the Senate parliamentarian, also ruled out a host of other Republican-led provisions Monday night, including construction of a mining road in Alaska and changes to speed permitting of oil and gas leases on federal lands.
While the parliamentarian’s rulings are advisory, they are rarely, if ever, ignored. Lawmakers are using a budget reconciliation process to bypass the Senate filibuster to pass President Donald Trump’s tax-cut package by a self-imposed July 4 deadline.
Under Lee’s plan, land in 11 Western states from Alaska to New Mexico would be eligible for sale. Montana was carved out of the proposal after lawmakers there objected. In states such as Utah and Nevada, the government controls the vast majority of lands, protecting them from potential exploitation but hindering growth.
“Washington has proven time and again it can’t manage this land. This bill puts it in better hands,” Lee said in announcing the plan earlier this month.
The proposal received a mixed reception Monday from the governors of Western states. Democratic New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham called it problematic in her state because of the close relationship residents have with public lands.
Republican Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon voiced qualified support. “On a piece-by-piece basis … we can actually allow for some responsible growth in areas with communities that are landlocked at this point,” he said at a meeting of the Western Governors’ Association in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Housing advocates have cautioned that federal land is not universally suitable for affordable housing. Some of the parcels up for sale in Utah and Nevada under a House proposal were many miles from developed areas.
New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich, the top Democrat on the energy committee, said Lee’s plan would exclude Americans from places where they fish, hunt and camp.
“I don’t think it’s clear that we would even get substantial housing as a result of this,” Heinrich said earlier this month. “What I know would happen is people would lose access to places they know and care about and that drive our Western economies.”