The Republican budget bill offers tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. To pay for those tax cuts, it slashes programs for ordinary citizens and sells off our public lands.
The bill cuts safety net programs including Medicaid and food stamps. The budget draft requires the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service to sell between 0.5% and 0.75% of the 438 million acres the agencies manage across the West – up to 3.3 million acres. Over 250 million acres of public lands would be eligible for sale in the bill including Durango’s Animas Mountain and land along U.S. Highway 550 between Durango and Silverton.
This represents what is likely the largest single sale of national public lands in modern history. The public lands sell-off masquerades as a way to provide more housing, but it lacks safeguards to ensure land is used for that purpose and sets up a system where lands could be resold for nonhousing uses after just 10 years.
Cutting essential services for ordinary Americans and selling off our lands does not compensate for the funds lost to tax cuts. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the budget bill would add $3.4 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years.
Our U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd has said that he opposes public land sales without local input, but he still voted in favor of the House bill. Contact Hurd, Sen. John Hickenlooper and Sen. Michael Bennett and urge that they stop the sale of our lands.
Eugenia Miller
Durango
