There are bad ideas — and then there is selling off large slices of public natural lands to fund tax cuts.
A preposterous proposal, which Senate Republicans slipped into a draft budget bill this month, calls for offloading vast tracts of federal land in 11 Western states, including Washington. In the blink of an eye, members of Congress could vote as soon as Thursday to put for-sale signs on millions of acres of pristine landscapes that took decades to preserve.
In the mind of Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and originator of the idea, it’s a way to turn “federal liabilities into taxpayer value, while making housing more affordable for hardworking American families.”
But the lands are mostly far removed from any existing infrastructure, making it highly unlikely anything other than remote resorts will be constructed.
“We don’t want places that climbers and hikers and outdoor recreationists have gone to for years all of the sudden to be turned into luxury resorts or golf courses,” Washington Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell said in a briefing with reporters Tuesday.
Lee’s effort hit resistance Monday when the Senate’s parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, ruled it violated the chamber’s rules as Republicans seek to use the budget reconciliation process to bypass a filibuster by Democrats. Though he backpedaled by removing all U.S. Forest Service lands from his crosshairs, Lee said he would still pursue a plan that would include lands overseen by the Bureau of Land Management, including roughly 344,000 acres in Washington.
Think of preserved places like the Eastern Washington Shrub Steppe; landscapes paralleling the Columbia River; and within the mountainous terrain of the Methow Valley.
These public lands are irreplaceable, wide swaths of America that provide fresh water, carbon-sequestering forests and habitat, and recreation opportunities for all. Through development, they could be lost forever. Congress can pursue the necessary and important goal of reducing the federal deficit and ultimately the national debt. But not on the backs of some of our most coveted lands.
In a show of naked partisanship, Washington is one of the states subject to the sales but not Montana, whose two Republican senators voiced their own opposition to the proposal.
“Once the land is sold, we will never get it back,” Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Montana, said in a news release founding a public lands conservation caucus that includes Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Sunnyside, and Rep. Emily Randall, D-Bremerton.
Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Sunnyside, and Rep. Emily Randall, D-Bremerton, joined a bipartisan group of lawmakers this spring in advocating conservation of federal lands.
Keep fighting. Washington’s preserved federal lands should never be pawns for tax cuts.
Editor’s note: This editorial contained incorrect information. Montana Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke successfully led an effort in the House of Representatives, not the Senate, to remove public lands from possible sale.
