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Public land sale out of Senate bill, for now
An estimated 1,500 to 2,000 people held a rally outside the Eldorado Hotel in Santa Fe to protest against the proposed sale of public lands by the Trump administration, during the Western Governors’ Association meeting on Monday.
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A controversial proposal to rapidly sell 2 million to 3 million acres of federally owned public lands in 11 western states, including New Mexico, has been struck from the budget bill working its way through Congress, as has a policy that would force states to pick up the tab for some federal food aid costs.
The public land sale proposal wasn’t killed because of vocal pushback from advocates and protesters concerned about access to national forests and protecting watersheds — a crowd of at least 1,000 protested the proposal in Santa Fe on Monday — but because of the Byrd Rule, which prohibits extraneous provisions in the type of bill Republicans are working to pass.
Republicans are trying to get the budget package through as a reconciliation bill, meaning they’d need a simple majority of 53 votes. To do that, they have to adhere to the Byrd Rule, so every piece of the bill has to substantively affect spending and not be primarily about advancing policy goals.
Nonpartisan Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough struck the public land sale mandate Monday night. Senate Republicans can still submit revised versions of the proposals.
“Yes, the Byrd Rule limits what can go in the reconciliation bill, but I’m doing everything I can to support President Trump and move this forward,” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, who originally introduced the amendment, said in a social media post Monday evening.
Supporters like Lee say the land sales could boost affordable housing. A similar proposal failed in the House.
Lee suggested a scaled-back version of a public land sale that doesn’t include national forests and would significantly reduce the amount of Bureau of Land Management land available for sale to only include land within 5 miles of population centers.
Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., applauded the decision to cut the land sale mandate from the bill but “remains vigilant against any attempts by Republicans to rewrite those provisions before votes are taken,” according to spokesman Luis Soriano.
Meanwhile, a plan to share the costs of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, with states based on their error rate was also struck.
With 21% of New Mexicans receiving SNAP benefits, the state has the highest SNAP participation in the country, according to a Trace One analysis.
