Nick Rahall: “while the Rule governing the pending budget reconciliation bill through a self-executing clause eliminated provisions…”

“while the Rule governing the pending budget reconciliation bill through a self-executing clause eliminated provisions that would have opened ANWR to energy development and enabled long-standing moratoria on OCS oil and gas drilling to be lifted, largely flying under the radar screen are provisions still contained in the pending legislation which would amount to the largest fire sale of federal lands in our Nation's history. These provisions would turn the clock back on federal public land policy to the days of the Homestead Act of 1862, signed into law by President Lincoln, with a cruel twist. The Homestead Act was appropriate in its era to help settle the West, transferring roughly 270 million acres of federal lands into the hands of private citizens for homes and farms. Largely as a result of that law, the West was transformed, it was populated, States were created, cities were built, and these areas became an integral and valuable part of the United States. However, when the usefulness of this Act expired, it was repealed, and since the Federal Land and Management Policy Act of 1976 it has been the official policy of the United States not to divest public domain land holdings, allowing exceptions when in the public interest.…”