A public lands sell-off is struck from the GOP policy bill

By Maxine Joselow, The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said late Saturday that he had dropped his contentious plan to sell millions of acres of public lands from the sweeping domestic policy package that the Senate will soon begin debating.

Lee made the nighttime announcement on social media after it became clear that the plan faced insurmountable opposition from within his own party. At least four Republican senators from Western states had said they planned to vote for an amendment to strike the proposal from the bill.

The plan had also triggered intense pushback from conservative hunters and outdoorsmen across the American West, who had warned that it threatened the lands where they hunted and fished.

“Over the past several weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time listening to members of the community, local leaders and stakeholders across the country,” Lee wrote on the social platform X on Saturday. “While there has been a tremendous amount of misinformation — and in some cases, outright lies — about my bill, many people brought forward sincere concerns.”

The provision would have required the Bureau of Land Management to sell as much as 1.225 million acres of public property in 11 Western states. Proponents had argued that the region has a severe shortage of affordable housing and that developers could build new homes on these tracts.

In his post, Lee said that, because of the strict rules governing the budgetary process that Republicans are using to pass the bill, he was “unable to secure clear, enforceable safeguards to guarantee that these lands would be sold only to American families — not to China, not to BlackRock, and not to any foreign interests.”

It was not immediately clear whether the budgetary process would have allowed Lee to prohibit certain businesses or foreign countries from purchasing land. The process, known as reconciliation, allows bills that affect government revenues to pass the Senate on a simple majority vote, avoiding a filibuster.

A spokesperson for Lee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The four Republicans who opposed the plan were Sens. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy of Montana and Jim Risch and Mike Crapo of Idaho. While opponents acknowledged the housing shortage as a serious problem, they rejected a public lands sell-off as a solution.

“One of the greatest gifts we’ve ever had in America is the public lands that have been passed down generation to generation,” Sheehy said in an interview Saturday before the proposal was struck from the package.

“Especially for us in Western states, it’s our way of life for hunting and fishing,” he continued. “I believe Mike Lee knows that, too, and I don’t believe he’s acting in bad faith at all.”

A previous version of Lee’s plan had called for the BLM and the U.S. Forest Service to sell between 2.2 million and 3.3 million acres of public lands. But the provision was stripped from the bill by the Senate’s parliamentarian, the nonpartisan official who enforces the chamber’s rules.

The latest version of the plan would have allowed individuals and companies to buy up to 2 square miles of land at a time, with no limit on how much property they could ultimately purchase. Only land within 5 miles of a population center would have been eligible to be sold.

In addition to the four Republican senators who opposed the plan, five House Republicans said Thursday that the land sell-off was a “poison pill” that would cost their votes for the package. The opponents in the House included Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., who led the Interior Department during Trump’s first term.