Senate Parliamentarian Rules Public Lands Sale Can't Be Included In Budget Reconciliation

The move comes as White House strikes protections from 59 million acres of roadless national forest

Late last night, the Senate Parliamentarian ruled that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resource’s measure to mandate the sale of public lands was not directly related to the budget, and therefore couldn’t be included in a budget reconciliation package. The two to three-million acre sale of national forest and BLM lands is gone, for now.

“This is a victory for the American public, who were loud and clear: Public lands belong in public hands, for current and future generations alike,” says Tracy Stone-Manning, President of The Wilderness Society. “We trust the next politician who wants to sell off public lands will remember that people of all stripes will stand against that idea. Our public lands are not for sale.”

Budget reconciliation is a process through which a bill can avoid the filibuster in the Senate, and be passed on a simple majority vote. But in order to qualify, measures in that bill are supposed to deal only with dollars and cents.

That restriction is established by the Byrd Rule, named after late Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-West Virginia), the longest-serving member of that legislative body ever. The rule carefully outlines six tests a measure must pass in order to remain eligible for reconciliation. Apparently destroying our nation’s system of public lands didn’t qualify.

“But make no mistake—this threat is far from over,” says Dr. Carrie Besnette Hauser, President and CEO of The Trust for Public Land. “Efforts to dismantle our public lands continue, and we must remain vigilant as proposals now under consideration including a proposal to roll back the landmark, bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act and threaten full, dedicated funding for conservation through the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF).”

The Parliamentarian ruling coincides with an announcement from agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins that the USDA plans to revive efforts from the first Trump administration to eliminate the Roadless Rule, which protects 59 million of our national forest system’s most pristine acres from development.

Separately, the administration has also recently launched an all-out assault on the Antiquities Act, which is the legislation authorizing presidents to establish national monuments, and is working to break the National Park Service in an effort to privatize park operations and sell some national parks.

Striking the land sell-off from the budget package won’t stop Republican lawmakers from continuing attempts to steal our land. The Department of Interior and USDA can sell parcels of up to 2,500 acres without mandated congressional approval, a measure interior secretary Doug Burgum has hinted he may use.

And, other significant harms to public lands remain included in the budget, including cuts to fees assessed on energy extraction operations, and permitting for a toxic mine adjacent to the nation’s most popular Wilderness area. (Update: mine permitting adjacent to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area is now being permitted through executive action, not the budget. I regret this error.)

Stay tuned as I continue to bring you coverage of all the above.

Top photo: BLM

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