Utah Sen. Mike Lee Folds On Public Land Sell-Off
But the fight for the future of America’s shared resources rages on.
Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee waved the white flag late Saturday, withdrawing from the GOP budget megabill his widely condemned proposal to sell off 1.2 million acres of federal land across the West.
Since first introducing the measure in mid-June, Lee spent his time attacking his ballooning number of critics, accusing the “far-left” of exaggerating the impact of his provision while repeatedly misrepresenting it himself.
Lee pulled the provision as the Senate was working to secure enough votes to advance the sweeping budget bill on Saturday. Several Republicans — Montana Sens. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy and Idaho Sens. Jim Risch and Mike Crapo — had signaled they would vote against the package if Lee’s land sell-off was included. And Sheehy vowed to introduce an amendment to have the measure stripped out.
In a statement announcing the withdrawal, Lee blamed “misinformation” and “outright lies” while making clear he has no intention of ending his crusade against federal public lands.
“President Trump promised to put underutilized federal land to work for American families, and I look forward to helping him achieve that in a way that respects the legacy of our public lands and reflects the values of the people who use them most,” he said in a statement. “I’m grateful to everyone who took the time to offer thoughtful feedback. Your voices helped strengthen this bill, and they will continue to shape the path forward.”
While Lee championed the public land sell-off scheme, he wasn’t the lone actor many tried to make him out to be. Only a handful of Republicans in Congress stood up to his proposal, while the vast majority stood silent as he tried to mandate a sell-off of up to 3.2 million acres of shared public resources.
Monday was an embarrassing defeat for Lee, who has spent his entire career working to wrest control of public lands from the federal government. But he came within striking distance. And while his proposal appears to be dead for now, the Trump administration is separately eyeing selling of hundreds of thousands of acres of federal land for housing development — a push that closely mirrors Lee’s effort.
In the coming days, Public Domain will be parsing through Lee’s failed attempt to turn public land over to private interests and digging into where the fight is likely to go from here.
A big part of the problem is the way Lee frames the situation: "I continue to believe the federal government owns far too much land ..." We need to make it clear to him (and others) that We the People own the land and that the federal government simply manages it for us, in trust.
The press can help, too, by not referring to government "ownership," but rather "management." Many people are starting to refer to them as "national" public lands, rather than "federal," as a way to reinforce that and make the distinction because of the anti-Washington attitudes that are common across much of the West.
Thank you for the update and your continued work on this.