A last-minute add to the Republican tax, energy and national security megabill mandating the sale of public lands threatens to fracture GOP support for the sweeping measure, presenting Speaker Mike Johnson a new hurdle as he races to assuage his party on multiple fronts.
The public lands sale provision, 33 pages in all, was added to the House Natural Resources Committee’s piece of the legislation early Wednesday as an amendment from Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.). It would put public lands up for sale in both Nevada and Utah.
While Republicans had suggested the sales would amount to a few thousand acres, advocates and Democrats have said that in analyzing the amendment it could be 500,000 acres in total — or more.
A spokesperson for the Natural Resources Committee said they did not have exact figures. An Amodei spokesperson explained, after this story originally published, that the amendment involved 449,174 acres but that actions involving 356,100 acres would not amount to a net change in federal ownership.
Still, whatever the amount of land involved, the proposal carries political peril for the GOP. The megabill in the works holds the keys to President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda and his promises to “drill, baby, drill.”
Republicans are advancing the plan under budget reconciliation, a process that will allow them to avoid the Senate’s filibuster but requires almost total party unanimity thanks to razor-thin margins in the House and Senate.
Republicans for weeks have warred over how to pay for the multitrillion-dollar bill, debating politically thorny ideas like cutting Medicaid and nutrition benefits. Now, potential public lands sales are opening a new fissure — especially for Western lawmakers from states where public lands are wildly popular.
Chief among those lawmakers is Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.), who said Wednesday morning that he will “work with leadership” to get the amendment stripped from the bill.
“I have told leadership before, I have told leadership since, that … I strongly don’t believe [land sales] should be in the reconciliation bill,” Zinke told reporters in an interview immediately following an event launching a bipartisan Public Lands Caucus, which he co-chairs.
The former Interior Secretary added that he’s “not sure [leadership] would have the votes” if it’s not stripped.
“I don’t yield to pressure. I only yield to higher principle,” Zinke said.
Zinke’s vote on the final package could be critical, especially if Republicans begin to lose support within their own caucus for reasons outside of public lands like cuts to Medicaid. They are only able to lose a handful of votes within their own caucus, or the bill would fail and send the House back to the drawing board.
“Mr. Zinke’s drawn a pretty hard line. I don’t know how he backs away from it,” Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) said in an interview with POLITICO’s E&E News. “That could complicate things. We have a very slim majority, already. We have a lot of other things that are drawing a lot of attention.”
Newhouse himself sounded skeptical of the amendment but willing to consider it if it addresses what he sees as an overreach of lands being taken out of production.
“I’m a little reluctant to sell public lands to begin with,” Newhouse said. “We can certainly utilize them, provide access to a lot of different things without sales.”
“Some of the decisions made to set aside lands over the last few years have truly been expansive,” he said. “If that’s what they’re trying to get at, then I think I would be open to considering the proposals.”
‘Look how much damn land we have’
The House could strip the amendment out in several ways if there is political will to do so. But that ball is now squarely in Johnson’s court, as he would likely have the final say on whether to allow a vote on pulling the provision out of the bill.
But there are some in the House who are thrilled about the proposed land sales and hope Zinke comes around, including House Natural Resources member and Western Caucus Chair Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.). LaMalfa has long argued that the U.S. owns more land than it can manage.
In the West, the federal government owns huge swaths of land, a sore point with many conservatives. It owns more than 80 percent of the land in Nevada and about 63 percent of the land in Utah.
“I think he’s in the minority on that,” LaMalfa said of Zinke’s opposition. “I believe there’s time for a way to come around and see the importance of the bill.”
“Look how much damn land we have,” LaMalfa added. “The government doesn’t need to own so much land. It’s not like we’re gonna get rid of half of it. … Federal ownership does not make it pristine or perfect, because they don’t manage, they let it all burn.”
Selling public lands would also create problems in the Senate, which will have the opportunity to strip provisions out that it doesn’t like once the House approves the bill.
Zinke’s Montana counterpart, Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), has drawn the hardest line against any public land sales.
“Senator Daines never has and never will support the sale of public lands,” a spokesperson said when asked for comment about the House measure.
Democrats in the Senate have also lined up against the measure from the minority.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), the ranking member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said Republicans “slipped a provision into their tax cut bill for billionaires to sell off hundreds of thousands of acres of public lands.”
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat from Nevada, slammed Amodei in a press release. Members of both parties in Nevada have supported legislation to transfer some federal land for housing in exchange for conservation elsewhere. Amodei’s amendment doesn’t do that.
“This is a land grab to fund Republican’s billionaire giveaway tax bill, and I’ll fight it with everything I have,” said Cortez Masto.
