Senate parliamentarian deals blow to GOP plan for public land sales

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, speaks during a campaign rally featuring Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, at the Whitney Recreation Center Saturday, Nov. 2, 2024. Photo by: Steve Marcus

A contentious public land sell-off in the U.S. Senate’s version of President Donald Trump's  “Big Beautiful Bill” hit a procedural snag late Monday which could drastically reduce its scope.

The Senate parliamentarian determined the amendment violated the “Byrd Rule” requiring reconciliation measures to be directly related to the federal budget. The provision would now need 60 votes to remain in the legislation —a threshold unlikely to be met given the opposition from all 45 Democrats and the two independents who caucus with them.

More than 30 million acres of public land in Nevada are eligible for purchase under Sen. Mike Lee’s, R-Utah, proposal, with up to 3.3 million acres from 11 Western states set to be sold.

Lee wrote online that he’d be making changes to the proposal, saying that only Bureau of Land Management land within 5 miles of “population centers” will be eligible for sell-off. U.S. Forest Service’s land is now off the table, Lee said.

The senator also discussed establishing “freedom zones” designed “to ensure these lands benefit” Americans and emphasized protecting farmers, ranchers and those who use public land for recreation. 

“Yes, the Byrd Rule limits what can go in the reconciliation bill, but I’m doing everything I can to support President Trump and move this forward,” Lee said. “Stay tuned. We’re just getting started.

Nevada Treasurer Zach Conine, a Democrat running for attorney general, said the negotiations feel more like “a hostage situation.” Nearly all of the money raised from sales in Southern Nevada would leave the state and instead go to the United States Treasury.

“We need to make sure that if public lands in Nevada are sold, that part of the proceeds from that sale, as has always been the case, go back to the state,” Conine said, to keep “protecting our public lands, protecting our roads and our bridges and making sure that Nevadans have a better way of life.”

Olivia Tanager, director of the state’s Sierra Club chapter, said she’s “cautiously optimistic” about the land sale being stopped “for now.” However, Republicans have overruled the Parliamentarian before, Tanager said.

Whether there’s a political appetite for it remains to be seen.

Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” comes with a hefty price tag of $2.4 trillion added to the debt over a decade, but some Western Republicans have said they oppose the land sale.

The GOP would also need to get some Democrats on board to get over the 60-vote hump.

Regardless of whether Lee’s proposal goes into the reconciliation bill, Tanager said Nevada is still under threat. It won’t be the last attempt to sell swaths of land, she said.

Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., wrote on social media shortly after the Utah Senator’s post that Nevadans were watching the changes and “see right through Senator Lee’s maneuvers.”

“I’ll continue fighting any provision that sells off our public land without our consent and without adequate safeguards for our limited water resources,” Titus said.

Lee has pitched the sell-off as a way to develop affordable housing, but the Titus previously noted there’s not much in the text to stop developers from building what they want: high-end housing. 

“You’re not going to solve that problem,” Titus said at a recent Sierra Club event. “You’re not addressing the water problem. You’re creating more congestion, more air pollution, more demand on resources with the expansion of infrastructure.”