Lee-Daines Amendment Now Threatens 294,646,021 Acres Of Public Land

Full text, methodology, and new maps of impacted areas show much larger land sell-off

A more complete analysis of the massive public land sell off Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Steve Daines (R-Montana) are inserting into the Senate’s budget reconciliation package shows that areas it would authorize for sale total 294,646,021 acres, impacting vast swaths, if not majority areas of western states and Alaska. The analysis coincides with news that the budget would add $3.4 trillion to the national deficit, according to a non-partisan Congressional report.

Reporting around the amendment, which comes from the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, which Lee chairs and which Daines sits on as the chairperson of the Subcommittee on National Parks, has been challenging due to the intentionally obtuse language it uses to parse lands and direct them for sale. That language is likely a deliberate attempt to obfuscate and conceal these efforts from the voting public.

The amendment, which Lee and Daines published on June 11 without a committee hearing or vote, mandates the sale of between 0.5-0.75 percent of all BLM land and that same percentage of USFS land, while designating 11 western states in which those sales can take place, excluding any lands in Montana, and carving out lands that are protected under various federal designations.

That’s a relatively challenging formula to apply, but according to math run by people much smarter than me at The Wilderness Society, total lands mandated for sale here could total between 2.02 and 3.04 million acres. Others running that math have come up with a maximum number of 3.3 million acres.

That amendment will be voted on by the full Senate sometime between now and the July 4 deadline they’ve arbitrarily set for completing the budget. Should it pass there, it will go to the House, where Republican representatives vulnerable in the 2026 mid-terms caved to voter pressure, and removed a previous provision that would have sold-off around 500,000 acres.

Should it become law, the amendment would push through the sale in short order.

“The secretaries of agriculture and interior will have 30 days to solicit nominations for lands to be sold from ‘any interested parties’ and must publish a list every 60 days of lands eligible for sale until they’ve reached the quota,” explained a TWS representative speaking to me on background. “The entire sell-off must be completed within 5 years.”

The amendment fails to give Indigenous people any right of first refusal or other priority for sale, even for lands of religious, cultural, or historic importance to them.

The Lee-Daines Amendment then goes on to define the lands eligible for sale. A TWS representative explains that formula:

• Eligible states: AK, AZ, CA, CO, ID, NV, NM, OR, UT, WA, WY

• Excludes federally protected land (defined by the bill as a National Monument; National Recreation Area; component of the National Wilderness Preservation System; unit of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System; unit of the National Trails System; National Conservation Area; unit of the National Wildlife Refuge System; unit of the National Fish Hatchery System; unit of the National Park System; National Preserve; National Seashore or National Lakeshore; National Historic Site; National Memorial; National Battlefield, National Battlefield Park, National Battlefield Site, or National Military Park; National Historical Park)

• Subject to valid existing rights (understood to mean it excludes lands with property interests like oil and gas leases, rights-of-way or perfected mining claims in existence before the date of enactment of the bill; note that prior version of the bill defined lands with “valid existing rights” to include those with grazing permits, and the new version strikes that. Since “valid existing rights” is best understood to mean property interests like oil and gas leases, rights-of-way or perfected mining claims, this new version seemingly puts grazing permit lands back on the table for disposal, which sends the eligible acreage skyrocketing).

It’s that provision for including or not including grazing permit lands that has resulted in wild swings in estimates for total acreage made eligible for sale. Those lands were excluded from sale in the bill’s initial version, then quietly removed over the weekend, resulting in the new estimates.

Here’s the full text of the Lee-Daines Amendment, as it stands at the time of writing:

Redline (new25684 Vs

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Earlier today, the Outdoor Alliance’s GIS lab compared its calculations with TWS and the two agreed on a new conclusion that the Amendment authorizes the sale of a grand total of 194,629,653 acres of BLM land and 100,016,368 acres of National Forest, which add up to 294,646,021 acres.

You can see that map at this link.

“Perhaps the more challenging part, was figuring out all of the valid existing rights that were listed on the pages following the special designations,” explains OA’s mapping guy. “This included several datasets from the BLM like mining claims, oil and gas leases, permits/easements, mineral rights, and several others. I had a great discussion with TWS staff yesterday morning and they were very helpful discussing all the existing rights layers that should be included in the analysis.”

“In any case, it's A LOT of public land that could potentially be up for sale, and it's hard to pinpoint at this juncture where that could be, because there's not a lot of guardrails,” they continue.

TWS says that the ultimate total very much remains in flux, as Lee and Daines hash out final language.

“We’re hearing that SENR is likely to change the bill text again, maybe tonight, to change the way it treats grazing permits,” the TWS rep explains. “So the eligible acreage will swing back, presumably.”

What’s the difference between the three-or-so million acres mandated for sale by the Lee-Daines Amendment and the 294,646,021 acres authorized for sale by it? There’s nuance to that answer, and that matters.

Lee and Daines have included language that states all lands authorized for sale are, “considered to meet the requirements of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act," which, if this passes into law, would mean they can be sold without any further public process.

It’s important to remember here that this budget is being pushed through the Senate using budget reconciliation. That helps Republicans avoid debate on unpopular provisions like this one—the reconciliation process means that Senators will only have to vote on the amendment once, during a full floor vote, and not separately in committee—and avoids the filibuster so that the budget can pass on a simple majority vote, rather than the typical 60 votes, which Republicans do not have.

But, using budget reconciliation also means that any measure which adds to the deficit must be offset by equivalent savings.

(The math Congress uses is of its own creation, and is very much not tethered to reality. A measure passed by the House in January, for example, prevents the consideration of ongoing revenues on these lands from being considered. Those revenues are likely considerable, the BLM nets $262 billion annually, while National Forests rake in over $300 billion.)

Reports indicate that target revenue for the mandated sale is $5 to 10 billion over that five year sale period.

All this is relevant to this discussion because balancing revenues generated by land sales against the deficit in a bill that also authorizes 46 percent of all public lands for sale without public process sets up an impossible scenario for future budgets, no matter who takes charge of Congress or the White House in future elections.

Not only does the Lee-Daines amendment create precedent for selling public land in order to fund tax cuts for billionaires, but it also creates a scenario in which future budgets will need to create new revenue from other sources (like politically challenging increases to taxes) in order to make up for revenues now achieved by ongoing sales of land. Land that, should this measure and budget pass, will already be authorized for sale. And that’s going to come even as lawmakers will have to find money to service massive increases to the nation’s interest payments.

According to polling conducted by the Trust for Public Land in April, 71 percent of Americans oppose any sale of public land.

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