Politics

“Over the past several weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time listening to members of the community, local leaders and stakeholders across the country,” Lee wrote on the social platform X on Saturday. “While there has been a tremendous amount of misinformation — and in some cases, outright lies — about my bill, many people brought forward sincere concerns.”

The provision would have required the Bureau of Land Management to sell as much as 1.225 million acres of public property in 11 Western states. Proponents had argued that the region has a severe shortage of affordable housing and that developers could build new homes on these tracts.

In his post, Lee said that, because of the strict rules governing the budgetary process that Republicans are using to pass the bill, he was “unable to secure clear, enforceable safeguards to guarantee that these lands would be sold only to American families — not to China, not to BlackRock, and not to any foreign interests.”