Congress Proposes Selling Public Land To Pay For Billionaire Tax Cuts

The House Ways and Means Committee just created a menu of available revenue, including sales of lands like National Forests

A list of budget offset measures proposed by the House Ways and Means committee includes “Sell Federal Land,” as a line item. There’s also cuts for everything from National Park Service staffing, to coastal community climate resilience measures, to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to domestic water supply projects, to NOAA weather forecasting, to condemning polar bears to extinction. The proposals are part of an attempt to offset decreases in revenue that will come from tax cuts for the ultra wealthy in an omnibus bill Republicans are hoping to pass using budget reconciliation soon after Trump’s inauguration.

There’s a lot to work through here. I’m going to try to explain it all as clearly as possible.

Why Is This Happening?

Republicans have a 53 seat majority in the Senate. To avoid a filibuster, most bills require 60 votes. But, a process known as “budget reconciliation” allows legislation to pass with a simple majority.

Only policies that alter spending and revenues can be included in a budget reconciliation package. While Congress can’t use budget reconciliation to, say, ban the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from studying climate change, it can instead simply reduce or zero out the budget allocated for it to conduct that research. So policy objectives are achieved via spreadsheet, rather than express language.

But bills must pass both the Senate and House. Under the Congressional Budget Act, points of order can be raised on the House floor in objection to portions of a bill that increase the deficit. In order to ensure swift passage of a budget reconciliation package, lawmakers attempt to offset proposed decreases in revenue (tax cuts) with equivalent decreases in spending.

Determining the kinds of things that may or may not increase the deficit, and thereby justify a point of order, is defined by Congress itself, and isn’t necessarilyreality-based. Once every two years, at the beginning of each new legislative session, the House writes its own rules package that governs things like what kind of budget calculations will be accepted to justify a point of order. Tee’ing up a sell off of public lands, the House this year adopted a rule which prevents the consideration of ongoing revenues generated on lands proposed for sale in this process.

President-elect Trump is asking lawmakers to find $5 trillion in savings through this reconciliation package, in order to pay for his proposed extension of the 2017 tax cuts, and new border security measures. Those tax cuts overwhelmingly benefit the richest Americans. Republican law makers are using this as an opportunity to achieve their legislative priorities all at once.

What Cuts Are Being Proposed?

Here’s a link to a 50-page document created by the House Ways and Means Committee detailing proposed cuts and new revenue. Remember that these measures are intended to offset decreased tax revenue, so even new income is here presented as “savings.”

There’s stuff impacting most areas of federal spending here. I’m going to focus narrowly on public lands, the environment, climate change, and other stuff that stands to impact our enjoyment of the outdoors. If you spot anything in that document that I don’t, please share it in comments.

Sell Federal Land

Perhaps the most significant proposal here also contains the least detail. That’s not a good thing. By eliminating the need to consider existing revenue, Congress is effectively setting the starting bid for America’s natural places at $1.

This ignores not only the fact that public lands currently generate significant revenue for the Treasury, helping offset the taxes you and I pay, but also fails to consider the economic activity these natural spaces facilitate, as well as ecosystem benefits like clean air, clean water, and biodiversity. In 2023 alone, areas managed by the Bureau of Land Management generated $8 billion in direct revenue for the federal government, while supporting 783,000 jobs and $252 billion in economic activity (all of which also creates tax revenue). The Forest Service produces $288 billion annually in lumber alone. The outdoor recreation industry, which relies on public access to public lands, generates $1.2 trillion annually, supporting 5 million jobs. I could go on, but you get the idea.

If the government operated like a business, a full accounting of the revenue generated by any parcel of land to be sold would be calculated, and the land priced at an annual multiplier of that revenue. Entities interested in a purchase would then conduct their own assessments of that parcel’s potential value, and the costs associated with extracting it, then bid accordingly, with the sale going to the highest bidder.

That this process will not be followed, and that Ways and Means has not created a target for the “savings” it hopes to achieve through a sale points to a larger truth: Selling public lands isn’t about revenue, deficits, or reducing the tax burden faced by Elon Musk’s various companies. It’s about serving the interests of major campaign donors from the oil, gas, and real estate industries at the expense of the American people, our natural places, our jobs, and our government’s fiscal bottom line.

National Park Service Staffing

Ways and Means is proposing a $267 million reduction in staffing for the National Park Service. The average NPS employee earns $61,000 annually, so this would eliminate roughly 4,377 jobs. NPS currently employs around 20,000 people, so this measure would eliminate about one-fifth of that workforce.

This is a problem because NPS is actually asking for an additional $151.9 million in its 2025 budget request in order to give those employees (who earn less than the national average) a 2.0 percent raise. It’s also requesting $28 million for additional staffing capacity. Reducing rather than increasing those numbers will limit public-facing educational and guidance programs, limit maintenance activities, and reduce law enforcement presence in national parks, during a time in which they face record visitation, and multi-billion dollar infrastructure shortfalls.

The proposal also includes eliminating $132 million in funding for climate change resilience programs in National Parks and on other public lands, setting those up for even worse infrastructure problems in the near future.

Coastal Communities and Climate Resilience

The budget proposes halving the budget set aside to help coastal communities prepare for the worsening impacts of climate change. This will reduce or eliminate funding for infrastructure projects, and threaten food supplies from fisheries.

Repeal Green Energy Tax Credits

Ways and Means wants to recoup $796 billion over 10 years by eliminating all forms of green energy tax credits, including those for electric vehicles, efficient building practices, carbon sequestration, and renewable energy projects. This would undo most of the Biden administration’s achievements on reducing emissions to address climate change, and result in a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade, as well as re-entrenching fossil fuel industries, which would continue their significant taxpayer subsidies.

There’s additional proposals to eliminate pretty much all other forms of renewable energy incentives, including:

• Home energy reduction rebates

• High efficiency home rebates

• Home energy efficiency grants

• Department of Energy loans

• Advanced vehicle technology manufacturing

• Department of Energy administration, oversight and regulatory costs

• Domestic manufacturing grants

• Heavy-duty vehicle electrification

• Diesel emission reductions

• Air pollution reduction funding

• Air pollution reduction at schools funding

• Methane emissions reduction

• Etc.

Oh, and eliminating passenger vehicle emissions standards through the Tailpipe Emissions Rule and DOT CAFE standards will apparently save $111.3 billion. But this may not be necessary, because the Ways and Means documents states, “It is likely that these rules will be among the first repealed by Trump executive action.”

There’s also a proposal to assess fees on EVs, just for being EVs.

Domestic Water Supply Projects

Republicans want to eliminate $487 million in Inflation Reduction Act funding for water supply resiliency projects. Managed by the Bureau of Reclamation, this program provides grants for projects at the local community level designed to ensure reliable water supplies into future decades.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Climate Preparedness

Lands managed by USFWS—wildlife refuges—are under an array of threats from extreme weather caused by climate change. The Key Deer Refuge in Florida is sinking, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is burning, and Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge in South Carolina is eroding. Ways and Means would like to eliminate the $40 million budget USFWS has to combat all that.

NOAA Weather Forecasting

$123 million in research funding for new low-emission aviation fuels would be eliminated from NOAA’s budget, along with $47 million for weather forecasting, $4 million in computing capacity, and $22 million for acquiring new hurricane forecasting aircraft.

Mandate New Oil Lease Sales In ANWR

Potential drilling sites in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve correspond directly to polar bear den locations. The goal of polar bear conservation efforts is to (hopefully!) keep population levels high enough that, should we figure out how to reverse the worst effects of climate change and reduce global temperatures to a level again able to support consistent levels of sea ice in the arctic, there will be enough of the bears remaining to repopulate their former habitat.

By mandating oil be extracted from ANWR, the Ways and Means proposal will imperil one of only two polar bear populations found in the United States, jeopardizing the species’ future.

Why Does All This Matter?

You, me and the rest of this country own 640 million acres of public land, managed on our behalf by the federal government. While that’s a lot more than exists in any other country, it’s still a finite amount. Once any portion of it is gone, it’s gone forever. And gone with it will be the natural resources on that land—including plants and animals—that keep all of us healthy.

Opening the door to even a small sell off would serve to make future sales easier, and fragment both public access and habitats. Successful ecosystems are intact, interconnected ecosystems. Removing even a single acre from a forest, wetland, or anything else would carry impacts greater than the size of that parcel.

Even without considering any of the rest of the harm either mentioned here, or in the rest of that menu of potential budget cuts, what could possibly justify selling off our nation’s natural heritage?

The 2017 tax cuts for the very wealthy and large corporations had a net negative effect on our economy. Continuing and expanding them will serve only to redistribute wealth away from working Americans, concentrating it in the hands of the wealthiest few. Losing the places we camp, hike, hunt and fish, and the clean air and clean water we all rely on to achieve that turns a bad deal for normal Americans into a bad deal for all Americans.