For sale: Hundreds of thousands of acres in Utah and Nevada “a land grab to fund Republicans’ billionaire giveaway tax bill”
House Republicans approved an amendment this week as part of their sweeping tax cuts that would authorize the sale of thousands of acres of public lands.
Republicans in Washington are hashing out their sweeping tax cuts bill. On the House side GOP members of the Natural Resources Committee approved an amendment that that would authorize the sale hundreds of thousands of acres of federal public land in Nevada and Utah.
The provision, which initially faced bipartisan opposition, was put forward by Republican Representatives Mark Amodei of Nevada and Celeste Maloy of Utah. The land could be used for economic development like resource extraction and infrastructure projects as well as building affordable housing according to the proposal.
“A land grab to fund Republicans’ billionaire giveaway tax bill”
The land sales represent less than 1% of the federal land in either state. Areas that are under consideration to put up for sale for affordable housing include lands around Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada and St. George, a fast-growing tourist town in southwest Utah.
Maloy says that local communities in her state face difficulties because they are surrounded by federal land. In Utah around 63% of the land is owned by the federal government while the amount rises to 80% in Nevada.
“The sales from these small parcels of land will generate significant federal revenue, and have broad local support,” said House Natural Resources Committee spokesperson John Seibels. “It’s a tailored, parochial budgetary measure,”
However, colleagues on the other side of the aisle and environmentalists see the move as part of a larger scheme to sell more swaths of federal land as well as a way to offset the cost of tax cuts for the wealthy.
“This is a land grab to fund Republicans’ billionaire giveaway tax bill,” said Nevada Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto in a statement.
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