Sarah Rubinstein
Alamogordo News

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has made yet another attempt to revise his plan to put public land up for sale in the federal reconciliation bill. Lee’s original plan would have had 14 million acres of public land in the West eligible to private buyers. However, the public land sale was removed from the bill earlier this week for violating the congressional Byrd rule.

Now, Lee is determined to get the plan back on the federal budget bill. This time around, about 1.2 million acres of Bureau of Land Management land across the 11 western states would be eligible for sale, according to The Hill, a top U.S. political web site.

The plan would no longer include land from the National Forest Service. It instead requires that land will only be sold within five miles of a “population center,” Lee said on X, formerly Twitter.

Lee also reiterated he wants the land sold to solely Americans to be used for affordable housing. In response to the public land news, Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico) hosted a roundtable Wednesday morning comprised of senators from western states, conservationists, hunters and fishers to debunk the validity of Lee’s plans.

“This is not about housing,” Heinrich said. “This is about divesting our children’s birthright.”

Heinrich pointed out there is no specification in the bill text that this land must be used for only affordable housing or a minimum requirement for housing units per acre. He argues billionaires could take advantage of this.

Heinrich also discussed how under this new bill, 85% of the money from the public land sales would go to pay for tax cuts instead of going back into conservation, which the wealthy could take advantage of.

“That’s horseshit,” he said.

Member of the panel Hilary Tompkins, a former Solicitor of the United States Department of Interior and member of the Navajo Nation said the proposal was rushed, and there was no effort made to reach out to tribal nations who may be affected by the bill.

“They have had no notification about this proposal, and they have not been given the opportunity to talk about how this proposal could affect their off-reservation treaty rights,” Tompkins said.

Across the aisle, Republicans have also spoken against the public land sale. On Thursday, five House Republicans joined together: Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), Rep. Cliff Bentz (R-Ore.), Rep. David Valado (R-Calif.), and Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) in a letter stating if the public land sale makes it back on the federal budget bill, they will be forced to vote the entire bill down.

“While the Senate Parliamentarian has ruled Senator Lee’s original language out of order due to the Byrd Rule, the Senator is motivated to include the sale of public lands in the bill. This would be a grave mistake, unforced error, and poison pill that will cause the bill to fail should it come to the House Floor,” the Representatives stated in their letter.