House GOP Sets Stage For Public Lands Sell Off

Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service and National Monument areas under threat as House waves budgetary requirements for transfer

The House of Representatives has adopted a rules package that includes a provision designed to make selling off public lands easier. The move comes amid a significant legal effort to force the sale of Bureau of Land Management lands across the west, and as the incoming Trump administration plans an assault on national monuments.

Every two years, each incoming Congress writes its own package of rules that govern how the chamber operates. On January 3rd, following the selection of Mike Johnson as Speaker, a 215-209 vote approved rules that contain a measure that will make it easier to transfer federally-managed public lands to state control.

Subsection (c)(2) of the Rules for the 119th Congress reads:

“In the One Hundred Nineteenth Congress, for all purposes in the House, a provision in a bill or joint resolution, or in an amendment thereto or a conference report thereon, requiring or authorizing a conveyance of Federal land to a State, local government, or tribal entity shall not be considered as providing new budget authority, decreasing revenues, increasing mandatory spending, or increasing outlays.”

In short: lawmakers will be unable to raise a budgetary point of order in the event a land transfer bill comes to the floor. Under previous rules, anything that costs the Treasury money had to be offset by matching budget cuts or increases to revenue. This is not prudent governance.

And despite GOP rhetoric to the contrary, federally managed public lands earn local, state, and the federal government billions of dollars in revenue each year. In 2023, BLM land alone generated $201 billion in total economic output, supporting 783,000 jobs and generating $8 billion for the federal Treasury, all on a budget of $1.7 billion. This money comes from extraction and recreation, but does not factor in the value of ecosystem benefits like clean air and water.

In Utah, which is suing the federal government for control of the 18.5 million acres of BLM land within its borders, that land creates $6.7 billion in economic output, 36,000 jobs, and $788 million in tax revenue for the state each year.

With these new rules, lawmakers will not have to consider the loss of these revenues in any legislation designed to transfer any or all of it to state control. That will not only streamline the passage of any transfer legislation, but also reduce federal revenue, increase deficits, and destroy the places where Americans recreate outdoors, and the clean environment and biodiversity each of us relies on.

Why is shifting management of public lands from federal to state control bad? It’s counterintuitive, but federal law actually dictates far more local input in the decision making that governs those lands than state laws allow for. That, plus the federal government’s multiple use mandate and massive budgets serve to prioritize public access and environmental protections. In contrast, state constitutions contain for-profit mandates that make sell-offs inevitable, and don’t require local approvals to do that. You can read more about why you don’t want states taking control of federal lands in an article I wrote way back in 2017.

Discussing Utah as part of all of this is relevant for two reasons: 1) other western states are joining its lawsuit for control of BLM land. And 2) the language in this rules package has been adopted before, in 2017, which led to Utah Representative Jason Chaffetz’s ill-fated effort to sell off 3.3 million acres of public land. A bipartisan group of outdoor enthusiasts rallied to oppose that measure, forcing Chaffetz to not only withdraw the measure, but to retire from Congress.

Will various user and affinity groups be able to work together to challenge a similar sell-off in 2025, and will our increasingly radicalized government be responsive to such a challenge? With control of all branches of government, the billionaires that control the the Republican Party may no longer feel we represent a significant enough electoral threat that they need consider our voices.

“Public lands are universally beloved, and polling has consistently shown that people consider them to be places shared with, and managed for the good of, the nation as a whole,” says Lydia Weiss, senior director of government relations for The Wilderness Society. “Selling them off is a bad idea and a deeply unpopular one. [This rule] effectively put[s] the nation’s public lands on the clearance rack, and it is the logical first step in a campaign to expedite sale of those lands.”