GOP Plan to Sell 3,200 Square Miles of Federal Lands Found to Violate Senate Rules

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.