A provision that would have forced the sale of federal public land was dropped from the Senate’s massive budget bill before a procedural vote to start debate on it over the weekend. This marks the latest entry in Senator Mike Lee’s (R-UT) longstanding attempt to sell federal land in the western United States.
The proposal faced overwhelming opposition from both sides of the political aisle. The budget reconciliation bill began in the House of Representatives as H.R. 1, dubbed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”, which initially included an amendment approved by the House Natural Resources Committee that would have allowed the sale of thousands of acres of federal land in Utah and Nevada. The language was dropped at the last minute due to opposition by Republican members led by Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT), a former Secretary of the Interior who controversially oversaw the review and reduction of national monuments during the first Trump administration.
As the Senate took up the House reconciliation bill, Lee introduced his own proposal to mandate the sale of millions of acres of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and national forest lands across 12 western states, including California. Our own analysis indicated that 875,000 acres of land within the Los Padres National Forest would have been eligible under the proposal. He later excluded Montana from the provision after the state’s two senators echoed Zinke’s sentiments. The plan received an immense amount of public backlash, including from major hunter and angler advocacy groups.
The Senate parliamentarian eventually ruled that the provision would violate the “Byrd Rule” that limits what can be part of the budget reconciliation process without being subject to a filibuster (which requires 60 votes to overcome). Days later, Lee released a revised version of his land sale proposal that excluded national forest land and limited BLM land sales to those within five miles of a population center and which do not have a valid existing right or other special protections. We estimated that about 93,500 acres across Kern, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Ventura Counties would have still been eligible to be sold under the new language.
As the Senate prepared to vote just to begin debate on the full budget bill, it was clear that the forced land sale provision would not survive. Senators Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy, both Republicans from Montana, stated that they would oppose the plan and had the votes to strip it from the bill. Zinke and several other Republicans in the House also stated that any federal land sales would be a “poison pill” that would force them to vote no on the entire bill. Senator Lee announced on Saturday that he had removed the entire provision from the bill, though it remains unclear whether this was because it would have been struck via an amendment or because it was once again ruled by the Senate parliamentarian to violate the Byrd Rule.
This high-profile series of events was not the first time Senator Lee has tried to pass legislation allowing the sale of federal lands for housing and other development. Lee’s budget reconciliation bill text appears to have originated in his “HOUSES Act of 2022“, which never made it out of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. He introduced the same piece of legislation in 2023, but the bill did not even receive a hearing. Interestingly, that legislation did not mandate that federal lands be sold. Rather, it would have established a process for state and local governments to nominate tracts to be sold for certain types of development projects, though the bill did not specify whether it was limited to BLM or other types of federal land.
Senator Lee’s preoccupation with reducing federal land ownership, at least in Utah, goes back even further. In 2012, a bill known as H.B. 148 (“Transfer of Public Lands Act and Related Study) was signed by the governor of Utah that demanded that the federal government “extinguish title to public lands and transfer title to those public lands to the state on or before Dec. 31, 2014.” At the time, Lee expressed support for the legislation, stating that the bill “could prove to be one of the most significant things the Utah Legislature has done.”
While this likely is not the last time we will see a federal public land sell-off attempt from Lee or other members of Congress, we are pleased with the fact that the provision has been dropped from budget bill. We appreciate everyone who contacted their members of Congress to express their concerns with the plan. The land sale attempt was part of a larger push by the current administration and some legislators to open up public lands to intensive development. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which houses the Forest Service, recently announced the rollback of protections for 58 million acres of roadless areas across national forests, an announcement that came on the heels of a March executive order directing the Forest Service to increase timber production. And as the Department of the Interior quietly reviews national monuments to determine whether they should be altered to allow for drilling and mining, attorneys at the Department of Justice have stated that the president has the legal authority to abolish national monuments entirely.
ForestWatch will continue to closely monitor and assess these threats while also providing simple ways for members of the public to speak out. Be sure to visit our Action Center to find out how you can get more involved with public land advocacy.
Header photo by Bryant Baker depicts the Irish Hills (background) as seen from West Cuesta Ridge in San Luis Obispo County. Both areas were threatened by different versions of the land sale provision.