FROM: Matthew Davis, Vice President of Federal Policy, League of Conservation Voters
TO: Interested Parties
MEMO: Big Ugly Bill Sells Off Our Public Lands for Polluters and Penthouses

Last week, we took a look at the first wave of provisions in Senate Republicans’ big ugly budget reconciliation bill, a wish list for Big Polluters that guts clean air, clean water, and climate action to pay for billionaire tax breaks. But that was just the beginning. New provisions unveiled over the past few days from the Energy and Natural Resources (ENR),  Judiciary, and Homeland Security Committees show just how far Republicans are willing to go to bankroll corporate polluters. 

This latest batch doesn’t just double down on giveaways to oil, gas, and coal; it proposes something even more extreme: selling off more than three million acres of America’s public lands. Under the false pretense of solving the housing crisis, Senate Republicans are making a push to dispose of our public lands with no affordability requirements, no conservation protections, and no real limits on what can be built. If this bill becomes law, there’s nothing stopping the next Trump Tower from standing on what used to be your favorite national forest. 

Let’s take a closer look at the sections of the Big Ugly Bill that came out last week: 

ENR Committee: Public Lands Sell-Off and Fossil Fuel Favors

When the “drill baby drill” agenda isn’t bad enough, it’s time to “sell baby sell.”

The ENR Committee’s section of the Big Ugly Bill doesn’t just hand over more public land to Big Oil; it puts millions of acres of Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service lands up for sale. It’s all being done under the guise of the housing crisis, but there are no affordability requirements, no conservation safeguards, and no guardrails on what gets built. All told, there’s nothing stopping our public lands from being sold off for the next Trump Tower, or for luxury developers, fossil fuel companies, and profiteers to treat our shared natural heritage like private inventory.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the rest of the bill is one big polluter payout. It starts with a taxpayer-funded oil and gas leasing blitz:

• Requires oil and gas lease sales across huge regions of our public lands and oceans, regardless of market demand, environmental harm, or community opposition.
• Slashes royalty rates for both onshore and offshore drilling and reinstates non-competitive leasing practices that encourage market manipulation.  
• Reinstates Trump-era oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, even after courts and communities rejected them.

It goes on to prop up the coal industry, one of the most toxic polluters of our time:

• Slashes royalty rates for coal leasing on new and existing coal leases.
• Repeals the Obama-era moratorium on new federal coal leases.
• Requires leasing of 4 million acres for coal mining.
• Authorizes mining without requiring new environmental reviews, even when outdated permits are decades old.

And just in case the fossil fuel industry needed more help, the bill creates a new Department of Energy loan program to fund upgrades and expansions at fossil fuel facilities. 

While polluters are celebrating all these new handouts and giveaways, the rest of us are losing the programs that lower our energy prices, protect our treasured public lands, and make our environment healthier and safer. Clean energy financing, investments in resilience, grid upgrades, energy efficiency, and more are all eliminated in this section. 

More in the Bill: Attacks on Families and Fairness

If the parts of the bill we’ve already covered don’t make the Senate’s priorities clear, these remaining provisions should do the trick.

Over in the Judiciary Committee, Senate Republicans are trying to weaken the courts’ ability to hold polluters and the government accountable. One provision makes it harder to stop government abuses in court, while another bans the Justice Department from including payments for environmental restoration or community relief in legal settlements, even in cases of serious public harm.

And in the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, infighting among Republicans led them to release two versions of the bill: one reduces the amount of funding for Trump’s racist and ineffective border wall relative to the House-passed bill but sells off the US Postal Service’s entire fleet of electric vehicles, while the other skips the vehicles sales but throws another $46.5 billion at the xenophobic border wall, which is an environmental disaster. And it gets worse: the bill maintains the Homeland Security Secretary’s sweeping authority to waive any law the agency wants, from the Clean Air Act to tribal consultation requirements, no matter the damage it causes.  

Whether it’s slashing much-needed clean energy and energy efficiency programs, selling off public lands, or gutting the rule of law, the message from Senate Republicans is clear: They’ll bend over backwards for polluters and billionaires, while leaving the rest of us behind. 

What’s Next: Will the Finance Committee Attack Clean Energy and Fuel Corporate Polluters?
The Senate Finance Committee’s portion of the Big Ugly Bill is due out soon, and we’re watching to see if Republicans will go along with the House GOP’s radical assault on the fastest and cheapest form of new energy to bring on line clean energy, right when we’re seeing our demand for energy go up. Here’s what we’re watching for in the committee’s text:

• Will Senate Finance Republicans eliminate clean energy and manufacturing tax credits, which are lowering families’ energy prices, creating hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs, and helping advance our global leadership in clean energy?
• Will they eliminate popular consumer and residential tax credits for solar and batteries, electric vehicles, and home energy efficiency, cutting off support for families trying to lower their utility bills, be self-sufficient, and transition to clean energy at home? 
• At least four Senate Republicans have publicly demanded changes to the House’s attacks on job-producing and energy cost-lowering clean energy tax incentives, and now 13 House Republicans who voted for the bill are urging the Senate to fix these harmful provisions gutting clean energy progress. Will the Finance committee listen to their colleagues and stop the attacks on cheaper clean energy that is disproportionately benefiting Red states and districts?
• Will Senate Republicans attempt to claim they have fixed the House’s draconian cuts to clean energy tax credits by only extending credits for more expensive and slower sources to get online like nuclear, hydropower and hydrogen, while undermining wind, solar, and batteries, the nation’s cheapest, fastest, and most rapidly growing forms of energy?

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