Editorial: Sell-off of public lands a ruinous budget solution

By The Herald Editorial Board

It’s said that George Washington, in a breakfast conversation with Thomas Jefferson, defended the necessity of two legislative chambers, noting the House’s legislative “hot tea” and the Senate’s “saucer.”

“We pour our legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it,” Washington is believed to have told one of the prime framers of the Constitution.

While likely apocryphal, the story communicates the Senate’s typical practice of more careful deliberation of legislation.

Most of the time.

The Senate has yet to live up to that practice regarding the budget reconciliation bill that has already passed the House. This, as a reminder, is the bill where much of the focus has been on provisions that would cut some $880 million in benefits from Medicaid and SNAP (food stamps), while extending the first Trump administration’s 2017 tax cuts, the bulk of which — 65 percent — would go to the nation’s wealthiest 20 percent; not to mention adding at least $2.4 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office, to the national debt over the next decade.

But in looking for additional revenue to reduce what’s piled on to the deficit, the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resource Committee has added a provision that even the House found too scalding for its liking; a requirement that the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management sell off between 2.2 million and 3.3 million acres of public land that the agencies manage on behalf of U.S. citizens.

The sale requirement would force sales of public National Forest and BLM land in 11 western states, including Washington state. The sales, said Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, chair of the Senate committee, would generate between $10 billion and $15 billion in revenue for the treasury and would open land for “affordable housing.”

The proposal doesn’t specify which acreage would be sold, leaving that to the two agencies to identify, but would limit sales to those properties within five miles of population centers.

To be clear, even 3.3 million acres represents less than 1 percent of the 438 million acres of lands that are held in public trust. National parks and wilderness areas would be exempt from the sales. Still, about 863,000 acres of forest land in Snohomish County are managed by the U.S. Forest Service. Washington state is home to 24.9 million acres of land, managed by the agency.

Yet, it’s not difficult, looking at a map of the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie Forest, to visualize which properties within Snohomish County might interest potential buyers, especially those along Highway 530, U.S. 2 and the Mountain Loop Highway. At the same time, the National Forest lands along those roads also are among the most accessible and most widely used for recreation, including hiking, camping, fishing, hunting and other pursuits.

And while opening up land for “affordable housing” is laudable, few of these properties are likely to attract developers with “affordability” in mind or within the reach or interest of low- to moderate-income buyers or renters.

“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,” Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation advocacy group, told The New York Times.

Opening up public lands to sale also goes against the ethic and practice of preservation and protection of public lands that Congress enshrined in law just five years ago in permanently funding the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which funds maintenance, protection and acquisition of public lands, parks and more.

Washington Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray have already criticized a similar sell-off scheme included in President Trump’s 2026 budget proposal.

Our National Forests and other public lands, sometimes are overshadowed by the “best idea” of the National Parks, but those lands are just as important, and in fact, are complementary to our National Parks. National Forest lands relieve some of the pressure from the impacts of visitors to the parks, and they are key to resource production, recreation and wildlife habitat.

Selling off less than 1 percent might seem a harmless trade, especially to avoid adding to the national debt, but those lands already are hard at work for the American people, and once sold would be nearly impossible to return to the public accounts.

The reconciliation bill was already seriously flawed before the addition of this proposal. The indiscriminate sale of public lands should be excluded from this and future budget proposals.

This tea isn’t just too hot; it’s weak.