Narrowed plan for public land sales is dropped from GOP mega-bill

Emily Fitzgerald/Washington State Standard

July 01, 2025 / 8:19 am

caption: Mosses, ferns, and firs grow in Olympic National Forest near Brinnon, Washington, on Nov. 22, 2021. About 5.4 million acres of public lands in Washington state would've been included in the public land sell-off.

A controversial provision to sell off federal public land, including in Washington state, has been removed from the Republican tax cut and spending bill now under consideration in the U.S. Senate.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, introduced a narrowed version of the proposal last week after the nonpartisan Senate parliamentarian ruled his original plan, which would have made millions of acres eligible for sale, was out of order.

Over the weekend, Lee said he was preemptively withdrawing the slimmed-down version, which covered U.S. Bureau of Land Management property that met certain criteria.

“Over the past several weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time listening to members of the community, local leaders, and stakeholders across the country,” Lee said in a statement on social media. “While there has been a tremendous amount of misinformation — and in some cases, outright lies — about my bill, many people brought forward sincere concerns.”

Lee said he chose to withdraw the land sale proposal because the constraints of the fast-track process being used to move the GOP budget legislation did not allow him to secure safeguards to guarantee land would be sold to “American families” rather than “foreign interests.”

The senator’s proposals drew widespread criticism.

“This was a wrongheaded proposal that had no place in this reconciliation bill. Many western Senators who know the value of recreational lands objected to its inclusion,” U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash, said in a statement after Lee dropped his latest proposal. “I am glad our special places will still be available for everyone.”

Last week, U.S. Rep Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., and four other Republicans in the U.S. House said in a letter to Speaker Mike Johnson that they would not vote for the “One Big Beautiful Bill” if it called for selling federal public land.

Much of President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda is packaged into the overall bill. The president is pushing lawmakers to pass the legislation by July 4.

This story was originally published in the Washington State Standard.