President Donald Trump and former Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t agree on much during the 2024 presidential election, but as Vice President JD Vance pointed out in his debate with Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), they did agree on one thing: that the federal government should sell some of the land it owns in the western United States to build new homes and lower housing prices.
This was news to the clueless Walz and debate moderator Margaret Brennan, but Vance was, of course, right. The Harris housing plan promised to “take action to make certain federal lands eligible to be repurposed for new housing developments that families can afford.”
Fast forward to this week, and the Senate version of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act contains a provision that would make good on Trump’s promise. Specifically, the legislation directs the secretaries of Agriculture and Interior to identify 3 million acres of land owned by the federal government that, in consultation with state and local governments, the secretaries determine would be suitable for “residential development.”
When listing lands to be sold, the legislation directs the secretaries to detail how the development of each property “would address housing needs, including housing supply and affordability.” Most of the proceeds from each land sale (90%) would go directly to deficit reduction, with 5% going to the local government where the land was sold and another 5% to the maintenance of other federal lands.
The legislative language in the Senate reconciliation bill is not new. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced the Helping Open Underutilized Space to Ensure Shelter Act in 2021 and has reintroduced it in every Congress since. Nevertheless, far-left activist groups such as the Wilderness Society are attacking Lee’s addition to the big, beautiful bill, alleging that it would despoil areas of natural beauty and environmental importance. The group published a map purporting to show which areas could be sold under the legislation, but left out the key detail that the bill specifically says all federally protected lands, including national parks, national monuments, national recreational areas, and wilderness areas, would not be eligible for sale under the proposal. The Wilderness Society map includes these lands as eligible for sale. The Wilderness Society is lying, which is what it does.
Three million acres sounds like a lot of land, but the federal government owns more than 640 million acres throughout the U.S., so the area designated would be less than half a percent of the total. The Senate’s one big, beautiful bill only calls for selling 0.4% of all federal land. In addition to all federally protected lands being off limits, any land currently leased by a rancher for grazing would also be exempt. In total, the federal government owns a little over one-quarter of all land in the U.S., but ownership is by no means equal. In most eastern, midwestern, and southern states, the federal government owns around 5% or less of the land. In Walz’s Minnesota, the federal government owns just 6.8% of the land.
But out west, the story is different. The federal government owns 85% of Nevada, 63% of Utah, 61% of Idaho, and 50% of Oregon. Much of this land is nowhere near urban areas and would be useless for housing development. But a lot of it is close to growing cities where, with local leaders’ input, new residential development space could ease rising housing costs.
TIM WALZ DOESN’T KNOW WHAT IS IN KAMALA HARRIS’S HOUSING PLAN
If the Wilderness Society and other activist groups get their way and stop the legislation, the U.S. will take one step closer to becoming like California, where entities such as the California Coastal Commission can shut down almost all residential development within sight of the Pacific Ocean. If we want a vibrant society that builds things again, where families can afford a new home, we must not give in to the dishonest environmental activists.
Walz and Brennan are clueless about what is needed to bring housing costs down, but Trump, Vance, and Lee know what must be done, and that includes selling public land to build more homes.