Viewpoint: Public land sell-off disguised as a budget bill

Rebecca Spring

Montanans build our lives around public lands. According to recent polling, 95% of us spent time on national public lands last year, and 90% regularly recreate on them. These lands support our way of life, our economy, and critical wildlife habitat.

These lands help bring money into federal coffers and can help balance the federal budget. That’s why it’s so perplexing that the U.S. House of Representatives is currently considering a budget bill that will rollback oil and gas reforms designed to raise revenue and protect public lands. These rollbacks could cost taxpayers more than $5 billion over the next decade and $2 billion annually after that.

Westerners overwhelmingly oppose these cuts. A recent poll from the National Wildlife Federation found strong, bipartisan support for keeping reforms that ensure oil and gas companies pay fair market rates, clean up after themselves, and drill only on lands with high production potential.

More than 80% of Montanans support requiring oil and gas companies to pay fair fees to drill on public lands. And 95% believe in keeping the current requirements for oil and gas companies—not taxpayers—to pay for cleanup. Yet the House reconciliation bill would get rid of these common sense fees.

Opposition to removing these reforms was strong and across party lines. These results should send a clear message to our elected officials in Washington, D.C.: oil and gas companies must pay fair rates, protect wildlife and water, and include local stakeholder participation in land management decisions.