Senate Republicans are resurrecting a plan to sell millions of acres of federal lands as part of President Trump’s giant tax and spending bill, setting up a fight within the party.
The proposal would require the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service to identify and sell between 2.2 million and 3.3 million acres of public lands across 11 Western states to build housing.
Past efforts to auction off public land have enraged conservationists and have also proved contentious with some Republicans. A smaller proposal to sell around 500,000 acres of federal land in Utah and Nevada was stripped from the House version of the tax bill last month after opposition from Representative Ryan Zinke, Republican of Montana and a former interior secretary.
“This was my San Juan Hill; I do not support the widespread sale or transfer of public lands,” Mr. Zinke said last month. “Once the land is sold, we will never get it back.”
The new plan to sell public lands was included in draft legislation issued on Wednesday by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that is part of Mr. Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.” The draft envisions raising as much as $10 billion by selling land for housing in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming over the next five years.
Notably, Mr. Zinke’s home state of Montana was left off the list.
Senator Mike Lee, the Utah Republican who leads the energy committee, said that the move would turn “federal liabilities into taxpayer value, while making housing more affordable for hardworking American families.”
Jordan Roberts, a spokesperson for the committee, said Mr. Lee had “worked closely” with Senator Steve Daines, Republican of Montana, to “incorporate key feedback, including ensuring a transparent public process.”
Mr. Daines, who has previously criticized the concept of selling federal lands, did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
Mr. Zinke “remains a hard no on any bill that includes the large-scale sale of public lands,” his spokesperson, Garrett Brown, said.
The draft legislation requires that the public lands be sold “for the development of housing or to address associated community needs,” and gives the secretaries of interior and agriculture leeway to define that.
A fact sheet issued by the committee said that the two federal agencies would be selling between 0.5 percent and 0.75 percent of their holdings, which amounts to roughly 438 million acres, and would prioritize land within five miles of existing population centers. The bill would exempt national parks, national monuments and designated wilderness areas.
The move would “increase the supply of housing and decrease housing costs for millions of American families,” the fact sheet said.
Environmental groups denounced the proposal, saying that it threatened lands used for hiking, hunting, fishing and camping.
“This is a shameless ploy to sell off pristine public lands for trophy homes and gated communities that will do nothing to address the affordable housing shortage in the West,” said Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation advocacy group.
The group criticized the bill for lacking affordability requirements.
As states like Nevada and California struggle with housing costs, some Democrats have supported limited efforts to allow more construction on public lands. During her presidential campaign last year, Kamala Harris said she would “take action to make certain federal lands eligible to be repurposed for new housing developments that families can afford.”
Under a law passed in 1998, the Bureau of Land Management is already authorized to sell certain federal lands in a small area around Las Vegas. So far, the agency has sold about 50 acres for the construction of about 1,060 affordable housing units.
Yet some Democrats criticized the new proposal as overly broad. Senator Martin Heinrich, Democrat of New Mexico, called it a “fire sale” and a “a sledgehammer to our national public lands.”
In addition to the land sales, the draft legislation from the Senate Energy Committee would also increase timber harvests in government-owned forests and seek to raise more than $15 billion through expanded oil, gas, coal and geothermal leasing on federal areas in Alaska and elsewhere. Many of those leasing provisions were already approved by the House.
The legislation would also claw back more than $6 billion in unspent federal climate and energy funding approved by Democrats under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. That includes money for the Energy Department’s Loans Program Office that was intended to help bring emerging clean energy technologies to market and nurture supply chains for electric vehicles.
However, Chris Wright, the energy secretary, has said that he would like to use the loan office to encourage the construction of nuclear power plants and has called for more funding.
To that end, the Senate bill would provide the agency with $660.5 million in new loan authorities for “energy dominance financing.” An accompanying fact sheet says that funding can be used to “fund enhancements at existing energy projects, repurpose decommissioned energy projects, and for other purposes.”
Brad Plumer is a Times reporter who covers technology and policy efforts to address global warming.
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