A Republican pitch to sell millions of acres of public lands — including thousands of acres in Oregon — has been drastically scaled back.

That’s after a coalition that included ranchers, hunters and environmental advocates decried the plan. Democrats and some Republicans in Congress also raised concerns, and the staffer who makes sure the U.S. Senate follows procedural rules said the proposal could not stand.

The public lands provision in the budget bill would have directed the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service to sell off up to 3.3 million acres from Oregon and 10 other states. Lawmakers have set a July 4 deadline to pass the bill and send it to President Donald Trump for his signature.

Oregon Republican Congressman Cliff Bentz issued a statement Wednesday saying he supports selling off federal land in some cases, but not on the scale proposed by U.S. Senator Mike Lee, R-Utah.

“I do support and encourage sale or exchange of parcels of federal land when there is a clear economic or social demand for such disposition, and when that disposition follows appropriate procedure and is generally supported by those affected,” Bentz said in the statement.

“I do not support a mandated disposition of millions of acres of federal land, the amount of which was arbitrarily established, the primary goal not being to respond to demand, but instead being the removal of land from federal ownership.”

GOP plan to sell more than 3,200 square miles of federal lands is found to violate Senate rules

Lee has repeatedly pushed to sell off public lands since at least 2022, and said he added the proposal to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act budget bill as a way to raise federal funds and boost housing supply.

Many conservatives in western states have long taken issue with the broad swaths of land owned and operated by the federal government.

In Oregon, communities with vast forestlands have wanted to see more revenue from timber harvests on these lands. But the proposal advanced by Lee would have prioritized housing, not timber, when selling off public lands.

In his role as chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Lee originally called for the heads of the U.S. Interior and Agriculture departments to dispose of between roughly 2.2 million acres and 3.3 million acres of federal land. That is less than 1% of all federally owned lands.

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On Wednesday, Lee acknowledged on X that his proposal did not meet Senate rules because it contained policy decisions unrelated to spending. He said he would update the proposal to no longer mandate the sale of Forest Service land and to limit the sale of BLM land to only that within five miles of population centers.

He also said he would “establish FREEDOM ZONES” — a concept he did not explain — and would work to protect farmers, ranchers and recreational users.

Housing prices are crushing families and keeping young Americans from living where they grew up. We need to change that.

Thanks to YOU—the AMERICAN PEOPLE—here’s what I plan to do:

1. REMOVE ALL Forest Service land. We are NOT selling off our forests.

2. SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCE…

— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) June 24, 2025

Lee released his promised update Wednesday.

The updated bill still encourages the Bureau of Land Management to “reduce checkerboard land patterns” when deciding which land to sell. That could result in the sell-off of a share of what are known as the “O&C lands” in Western Oregon, 2.4 million acres of forests that are largely managed by the Bureau of Land Management.

The revised language still drew criticism from environmental groups and Democratic lawmakers.

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., told Rolling Stone in an interview that the update is “at least as bad” as Lee’s original proposal.

Wyden said there are no provisions in the bill to guarantee that selling off public lands will benefit people who can’t afford housing — and that it could, instead, result in a sell-off to “gazillionaires.”

Bentz noted in his statement that sale of the lands without oversight would likely have unforeseen consequences.

“Some might argue that the abject failure of the federal government to adequately manage BLM and Forest Service land justifies its sale,” the Oregon Republican wrote. “But sale of this land to someone else is no way to assure its proper management.”

Washington, D.C.-based environmental group Defenders of Wildlife issued a statement from its director, Vera Smith: “No matter how many times, or how many ways, Senator Lee reintroduces this legislation, it will not change the fact that the American people are dead set against selling off our public lands.”

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/06/25/cliff-bentz-joins-chorus-against-land-sales/