Sen. Mike Lee withdraws public lands provision from Big, Beautiful Bill

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — Senator Mike Lee announced Saturday evening that the public lands provision aiming to make over a million acres of BLM land eligible for sale to provide for more housing has been removed from the full text of the Big, Beautiful Bill ahead of a marathon Senate vote expected Saturday.

The Senate parliamentarian stripped the original version for a violation of what’s known as the Byrd rule, a Senate rule that budget bills stick to issues that impact the budget. But Lee submitted two new versions, the latest of which his office confirmed to ABC4 had passed the Byrd rule.

However, in a post to Twitter/X on Saturday evening, Sen. Lee says that because of the strict constraints of the budget reconciliation process, he was unable to “secure clear, enforceable safeguards to guarantee that these lands would be sold only to American families.”

It’s unclear why Lee says that the rules were the reason he couldn’t keep the provision in the bill when the Parliamentarian, who’s the arbiter of the Byrd rule, had reportedly approved it.

It’s also unclear why Lee says he couldn’t secure a clear definition to prevent foreign entities from buying land, when his committee was responsible for the language of the bill.

The latest version of the bill did not include any restrictions on foreign entities buying the land, but it did give first right of refusal to local and state governments.

Lee’s most recent version was included in the text of the full bill released late Friday night. The updated text included the changes that were previously announced by Lee, but it also expanded definitions and updated requirements for purchasing the land.

All U.S. Forest Service land had been excluded from eligibility, and the Bureau of Land Management lands required to be sold were decreased, from 0.5-0.75% of BLM managed land originally to 0.25-0.5% in the updated version.

The updated version required that only land within 5 miles of “the border of an incorporated municipality” or “the center of the population center of a census-designated place” could be sold. The revised text added the definition of population center as “a census-designated place or incorporated municipality with a population of not less than 1,000 persons.”

Additionally, the revision added requirements that the Secretary of the Interior consult with the appropriate governor, local governments, and Indian Tribes after land is nominated for disposal. The governor of the state where the land is located must give input on the “suitability of the area for residential development.”

Governors and local governments would also have been given right of first refusal to purchase the tract of land, and a portion of the proceeds from each sale would have been given to local governments.

Anyone nominating land for disposal must describe how they plan to use the land and how it would address local housing needs, “including housing supply and affordability,” or infrastructure or amenities to “support local needs associated with housing.”

The revised provision also limited the number of tracts of land an entity can buy to two tracts, “unless the person owns land surrounding the tracts of covered Federal land to be sold under this section.”

The fate of Lee’s plan was never certain

Lee’s proposal faced pushback from both of Montana and Idaho’s Senators who said they would be running an amendment to strip the provision out of the bill, as well as from a group of five House members who threatened to tank the GOP mega bill if the lands sale was included in the Senate’s version.

Scott Braden, Executive Director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, addressed the removal of the provision in a statement:

“The nationwide, bipartisan backlash sparked by Senator Mike Lee’s proposal to sell off millions of acres of public land shows just how universally unpopular his idea is. While we’re glad to see Senator Lee has removed his sell-off plan from the Budget Bill and are celebrating this win, we know Lee’s underlying goal remains the same: to force the sale of America’s public lands using any excuse or legislative opportunity he can find. Senator Lee’s vision for the American West as a place without public lands is wildly out of touch with what Americans from all walks of life want to see. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, our members, and our partners will work tirelessly to defeat any future efforts to sell off our shared public lands for private profit and exploitation.”

The public lands sale provision had been deeply controversial, and there had been opposition from Lee’s own party. Thursday, Five Republican members of Congress reportedly wrote a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson stating that they could not support the Big, Beautiful Bill if it included Lee’s public land sale provision.