Throughout his career, Utah Senator Mike Lee (R) has said that his efforts to sell Our Public lands – our off-road trails, our hunting and fishing grounds, our camping, hiking, climbing and other recreational activities – have always been about helping them and the people of this country.
It was about addressing our country’s affordable housing crisis, something that affects millions of young Americans who are not able to buy their own home.
He has said this repeatedly, as have his supporters, reiterating his point as both the Utah Public Lands Alliance and the Blue Ribbon Coalition. Sale of public land for the good of the people! “This is to help American families buy homes,” Lee said in the post. Twitter account last year Before the Big Beautiful bill impasse, he said a few days later, “Housing prices are crushing families. This land should go to American families.”
He is not wrong. The average home in the United States is around $500,000. Its approximately $550,000 Lee and in my home state.
But as we’ve regularly highlighted in the past, the push to sell public lands to help the housing affordability epidemic has always been a bald lie. Lee’s own “no” vote on the recently passed HR6644, or the “21st Century Streets to Housing Act” proves just that, as the new act was specifically designed to help address that problem. Problem? This did not include the sale of land.
The Act, according to its text and supporters, is designed to help reduce some of the limiting factors that hinder new home construction, adding financing options for first-time homebuyers, assistance programs supported by Housing and Urban Development, helping veterans be able to purchase homes, as well as removing some of the environmental review issues that have made it difficult for companies and individuals to build new homes. Personally, I have my own issues with it, but the overall act is really designed to help the average American potential home buyer.
Furthermore, both the Senate and House agreed, as the vote in both houses of Congress was not even close to dividing along party lines, with the legislation being a reasonably bipartisan one, with a 358–32 vote in the House and an 85–5 vote in the Senate. However, Lee was one of five senators who voted against it.
one in statement defending one’s voteSenator Lee said, “Americans need more affordable housing. Unfortunately, this bill does not go far enough to provide it, but rather extends the federal government’s long-running and unsuccessful involvement in the American housing market.” Yet, his own track record on this subject of attempting to take over the federal government’s Department of the Interior and Natural Resources says otherwise. And while Lee and I agree (shockingly) that it doesn’t do enough, the enemy of progress is and always will be the pursuit of perfection.
A good law, even if it’s incremental, is still good for some average Americans. But Lee’s problem with the 21st Century Roads to Housing Act isn’t that it’s not good enough; The thing is, it doesn’t involve his pet project: selling off our public lands.
From the beginning, Lee’s personal quest has been to dismantle the Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Forest Service, and eliminate federally managed public lands. And he has worked tirelessly to do that throughout his career, both in the Senate and here in Utah. This came to a head last summer when Lee introduced an amendment to the Big Beautiful Bill through Congress that would have mandated the sale of nearly all of America’s public lands. However, it turned out to be a poison pill, as outsider and non-outsider Americans alike came together and fought it tooth and nail.
He also helped run a lawsuit sent all the way to the Supreme Court arguing that Utah should be in charge of Utah’s lands, not the federal government, spending millions of taxpayer dollars on the lawsuit and a parallel advertising campaign he and other public land selling supporters put together to influence public opinion.
However, public landowners won in both. The case was dismissed in the Supreme Court and Lee’s amendment was removed from the Big Beautiful Bill. However, Lee has not stopped, and has repeatedly used his chairmanship on the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and the Committee on the Budget to push forward land sales, leasing, and extraction efforts, when the public has overwhelmingly said they want none of it.
As his vote proves, Lee is undeterred.
So, the next time Senator Lee goes out and talks about how his sale of public lands for affordable housing is okay, remember this vote. Remember that when they actually had a chance to help make housing more affordable for average Americans, they voted no. They voted no because it didn’t involve selling your off-road trails and recreation grounds. They voted ‘no’ because it didn’t take away the greatest form of undistributed wealth in our country, to borrow a phrase from my friend Randy Newberg.
