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 kn…