After intense backlash from the outdoors community, members of his own party, and the Senate parliamentarian, Republican Senator Mike Lee announced he’s revising his plan to sell public lands throughout the western United States.
The Senate parliamentarian recently ruled that Lee’s previous bill—requiring the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to each sell 0.5% to 0.75% of land they currently manage—could not be included in the Senate’s version of the budget reconciliation package. Reconciliation is a tool used by one political party to pass tax and spending provisions with a simple majority in the Senate, instead of hitting that chamber’s required 60-vote threshold for enacting most laws.
The Senate parliamentarian is essentially in charge of ensuring the Senate follows its own rules, and the current parliamentarian found that Lee’s public lands sale violated the Byrd Rule, which “prohibits extraneous insertions to bills,” according to NBC Montana.
Before Lee’s proposal was pulled, however, he took to X to announce some changes he’d make based on feedback from all corners of the country.
Housing prices are crushing families and keeping young Americans from living where they grew up. We need to change that.
Thanks to YOU—the AMERICAN PEOPLE—here’s what I plan to do:
1. REMOVE ALL Forest Service land. We are NOT selling off our forests.
2. SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCE…
— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) June 24, 2025
All Forest Service land would no longer be available for sale, which means all land sold would have to come from the BLM’s portfolio. In addition, Lee says he’ll change the bill so that only BLM land within five miles of a population center is eligible for sale. He also makes a vague comment about protecting “farmers, ranchers, and recreational users,” but doesn’t give specifics about what that would look like.
It’s unclear whether Lee made the changes to his bill before, or after, the Senate parliamentarian ruled the original legislation couldn’t be added to the current budget proposal.
An updated version of the bill still hasn’t been made available, so there’s no way to know for sure what the new legislation will look like. It will also have to pass muster with the parliamentarian to be included in the budget proposal, and would also have to be approved by the House of Representatives. Some House Republicans, led by Ryan Zinke of Montana, along with every Democrat, voted to defeat a public land sale in their chamber’s version of the bill last month.
Lee also posted on X that he’s “working closely with the Trump administration to ensure that any federal land sales serve the American people—not foreign governments, not the Chinese Communist Party, and not massive corporations looking to pad their portfolios. This land must go the American families. Period.”
I think you had better correct this sentence. It is the most egregiously misleading thing I have read in years. House and Senate Republicans are the reason why public land sales are even being discussed, and the Democrats are unanimously opposed. The Republican House effort to sell our lands only failed by the slimmest of margins.
“ House Republicans, led by Ryan Zinke of Montana, defeated a public land sale in their chamber’s version of the bill last month.”