An overview of the budget reconciliation process and its implications for public lands, access, and conservation.

Last week, the House Committee on Natural Resources (HNRC) approved its portion of an emerging budget reconciliation package. For months, Congressional Republicans have been developing the package to implement the party’s domestic policy agenda, with an emphasis on cutting government spending and generating additional revenue to reauthorize and extend the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, along with defense and immigration related spending. 

According to HNRC Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), the natural resources portion of the budget reconciliation package will generate an estimated $18.5 billion in revenue and savings by mandating increased oil, gas, coal, and leases on public lands; reducing environmental regulations; and including a last-minute amendment to sell hundreds of thousands of acres of public lands in Utah and Nevada.  

The TRCP has been tracking budget reconciliation legislation and remains committed to helping hunters and anglers understand and engage in the process to maintain fish and wildlife habitat, public access and public commenting opportunities.  

Here’s what you need to know about the package, how it is developing as it moves through Congress, and how it will impact hunting and fishing across the country. 

What Is Budget Reconciliation? 

In 1974, Congress passed the Congressional Budget Act. This Act conveys the authority to set and enforce spending and revenue blueprints through a process called budget reconciliation. Under this process, Congress adopts a concurrent resolution that instructs House and Senate committees to meet assigned budget targets. Committees then develop legislation according to these directives, and the legislation from each committee is combined into a “budget reconciliation bill.” 

In statute, budget reconciliation bills are restricted by the Byrd Rule, which prevents the inclusion of policy provisions that don’t change the level of spending or revenues, or that only create “merely incidental” changes to spending or revenues. The rule also prevents provisions that increase deficits beyond the “reconciliation window,” which typically lasts ten years.  

Despite these restrictions, reconciliation bills are often looked at as potential vehicles to advance politically controversial provisions because this type of legislation carries special status in the Senate. Whereas most legislation requires 60 votes in the Senate to avoid a filibuster, budget reconciliation bills are considered under expedited procedures and allow passage with only a simple majority of 51. As a result, the reconciliation process has been used as the vehicle for several landmark packages when one party controls both chambers of Congress and the White House, such as President Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and President Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act and Inflation Reduction Act. 

Where Are We in the Budget Reconciliation Process?

The House and Senate passed a concurrent budget resolution on April 10, establishing spending and revenue targets for each committee. Because the reconciliation package includes tax provisions, the House is responsible for initiating legislation, which has begun to emerge from the committee process. The Committee on Natural Resources is the eighth committee to mark up and approve its reconciliation legislation.  

Earlier today, each committee’s recommendations were set to be approved by the House Budget Committee. However, the reconciliation text was ultimately rejected on a 16-21 vote over objections from the several Republican members. They opposed the current version of the bill due to their concerns that the bill does not cut spending far enough. The Budget Committee will work through the weekend to resolve these issues and will likely look to vote again early next week. If approved by the Budget Committee, the bill will then be sent to the House floor following another potential set of amendments in the House Rules Committee, where it can be passed with a simple majority. 

Committees in the Senate may opt to create their own versions that differ from the House, although the Senate is allowed to pass the House version without doing so. Once the Senate version reaches the floor for consideration, senators can use a point of order to reject provisions which they believe violate the Byrd Rule. The Senate Parliamentarian, a nonpartisan officer, will rule on whether each questioned provision is in violation of the rule, a ruling that can be waived with a sixty-vote majority. Republicans currently have 53 senators, meaning that provisions likely must remain within the boundaries of the Byrd Rule to pass. After this process concludes, the full Senate version can pass with only a simple majority. 

How Long Will This Take? 

After both bodies pass reconciliation legislation, the Senate and House must align their bills, either through a joint conference committee or through the exchange of amendments. The compromise version must again pass both the House and Senate before being signed by the President. House Republicans aim to complete this process by Memorial Day, but some Senate Republicans note that negotiations could take longer. 

Republicans are currently planning to address the debt limit through the budget reconciliation process. The Treasury Department recently announced that the “X Date” (the date by when the U.S. Government would default on its debt) will likely come some time in August. This means that Congress must act before then to increase or suspend the debt limit, placing a definitive deadline for reconciliation bills for as long as they remain linked with the debt limit.  

What’s in the Natural Resources Portion of the House Reconciliation Package? 

Public Land Sales in NV and UT 

An amendment successfully added to the bill would authorize the sale of roughly 460,000 acres of federal public land across Nevada and Utah. Given the nature of the amendment text, it is difficult to analyze exactly how many acres would be for sale. However, in Nevada, it’s estimated that the amendment would order the sale of 65,000 acres in Clark County, 16,000 acres in Washoe County, 12,000 acres in Lyon County, and 350,000 acres in Pershing County (including land exchanges); in addition to 11,000 acres across almost 70 parcels in Utah. Proponents of the amendment argue that the measure will generate revenue and facilitate housing and local infrastructure development.  

Following months of advocacy from hunters, anglers, and outdoor recreationists, the HNRC-released text originally omitted any provisions related to public land sales. The amendment was introduced late in the markup following more than 12 hours of debate. In addition to forcing land sales, the amendment also skirts the usual process of public input into any proposed land sales and fails to direct revenues from Bureau of Land Management land sales for the purchase of public access or habitat—the amendment would instead send revenues directly to the general treasury for other purposes.  

The TRCP agrees that there is room for discussion around how to facilitate small, purposeful exchanges and disposals that may facilitate affordable housing or other uses that are in the public interest and supported by impacted, local interests. We are willing to work in good faith to address challenges that communities adjacent to federal lands may face. But our stance on this approach is clear: it is the wrong approach to force this sale through a partisan budget reconciliation process in Congress that eliminates opportunities for public engagement and in a fashion that would NOT deposit any revenues from land sales back into conservation and access (as would be done through a different process).  

“There are well-established criteria and processes for disposing of public lands, and reconciliation legislation is not the proper venue for such decisions,”  said Joel Pedersen, president and CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. “Any proposed sale of public lands must involve a transparent public process, all transactions should serve the public interest, and proceeds should be reinvested in new public land access and habitat conservation.” 

Boundary Waters Conservation 

A provision of the Committee-approved bill would reinstate leases for Twin Metals Minnesota, a subsidiary of the Chilean corporation, Antofagasta PLC, to conduct copper-nickel sulfide mining activities directly upstream form the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Superior National Forest, threatening fish, wildlife, and water quality in the country’s most visited wilderness area. 

Each year, thousands of hunters and anglers visit the Boundary Waters, which contains over 2,000 pristine, interconnected lakes and supports large populations of loons, moose, walleye, trout, deer, ruffed grouse, fishers, beavers, sturgeons, and more. However, these species, this ecosystem, and the local economy are put at risk by sulfide mining drainage that increases acidity and leaches toxic metals in the watershed, endangering water quality and aquatic life.   

The TRCP is a partner organization of Sportsmen for the Boundary Waters, which opposes the Twin Metals mine.

Ambler Road Development 

The bill would require the Department of the Interior to issue permits, licenses, leases, and certificates to allow the construction of the Ambler Industrial Road. This road cuts directly across Alaska’s Brooks Range, which covers our nation’s most wild and remote hunting and fishing grounds. The fish and wildlife resources in this vast region – including one of the largest remaining caribou herds in North America and world-renowned sheefish fisheries – support 66 rural communities as well as a collective of guides, outfitters, transporters, air taxi services, and other small businesses.  

The proposed 211-mile Ambler Industrial Road would require nearly 3,000 stream crossings and span 11 major rivers, threatening fisheries, subsistence resources, and the region’s outdoor economy. The bill establishes a fixed annual rental fee of $500,000 for the road’s right-of-way from fiscal years 2025 through 2034.  

Further, the Ambler industrial mining road would not strengthen U.S. supply chains of critical minerals, but it could strengthen the supply chains of our adversaries. The road would facilitate the sale of Alaska’s mineral resources to foreign processors largely in southeast Asia and China. The TRCP is a member of the Hunters & Anglers for the Brooks Range, a coalition of over 14,000 individuals and 65 groups and brands, that opposes the Ambler Industrial Road.   

Rolling Back BLM Resource Management Plans 

If the House bill were to become law, policy language included would prohibit the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) from implementing, administering, or enforcing the following Records of Decision and Approved Resource Management Plans (RMPs): 

• Rock Springs Field Office, Wyoming 

• Buffalo Field Office, Wyoming 

• Miles City Field Office, Montana 

• North Dakota 

• Colorado River Valley Field Office and Grand Junction Field Office 

These plans are the product of extensive public engagement, and in some cases, state and locally driven negotiations among the variety of interests that are supported by multiple-use BLM lands. They also in some cases are updating management plans that are decades old. Hunters and anglers did not get everything that we wanted in these plans, nor did other interests at the table. If members of Congress have concerns about the content of these plans, the Bureau of Land Management has many administrative tools available to improve implementation of completed land use plans and has the discretion to surgically amend or revise those plans, which is preferrable to sweeping legislative action.   

Mandating Lease Sales for Oil, Gas, Mineral, and Coal on Public Lands 

Multiple provisions would mandate lease sales for oil, gas, mineral, and coal extraction on public lands. These include at least four lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; quarterly onshore oil and gas lease sales in Wyoming, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Nevada, and Alaska; at least 30 offshore lease sales in the Gulf; at least six lease sales in Cook Inlet, Alaska; and lease sales every other year in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. 

Additionally, the legislation mandates that the Department of the Interior make available at least 4,000,000 acres of federal public lands for leases on known coal reserves. It also lowers the royalty rates paid to the government by developers for oil and gas extraction, which some argue will spur new lease sales and thereby increased revenue. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 increased the minimum royalty rate from 12.5% to 16.67%, so this action would undo that increase. Even at the higher rate, oil and gas royalties for production on federal land are still much lower than on most non-federal lands, such as private lands and state trust lands.   

National Environmental Policy Act Process Changes 

Certain permitting reform provisions were also included. The bill would add an opt-in fee for project sponsors seeking federal NEPA review, including for oil, gas, coal, and mineral projects pursuing permits on federal lands. The fee would allow sponsors to pay 125% of anticipated costs of the environmental review, limiting environmental assessments to six months and environmental impact statements to one year. The fee would also make review assessments and statements exempt from administrative or judicial review, preventing advocates from challenging key elements of permitting decisions in court.  

Proponents have claimed that the provision would streamline the permit process and generate $1 billion in additional revenue, while critics have described the provision as a pay-for-play scheme, limiting the ability of the public to challenge projects that may have outsized, but under-reviewed environmental impacts. 

What’s Next?

Several of the provisions above include substantive policy proposals with seemingly “merely incidental” budgetary impacts, meaning that they could be outside the bounds of what is allowed by the Byrd Rule. It is possible, if not likely, that much of what passed the House Natural Resources committee will be heavily scrutinized on the Senate side to meet the 51-vote threshold. The TRCP is closely monitoring these bills and will ensure that hunters and anglers have a seat at the table to speak up for conservation and access. 

What Can You Do?

In the face of gridlock, conservation is, and should be, a shared priority regardless of party affiliation or ideology. TRCP is your resource for all things conservation. In our weekly Roosevelt Report, you’ll receive the latest news on budget reconciliation as well as emerging habitat threats, legislation and proposals on the move, public land access solutions we’re spearheading, and opportunities for hunters and anglers to take action. Sign up now. 

Hunters and anglers have always been the unsung heroes of conservation in America, quietly paying it forward every time we buy a license, a box of ammo, or a tank of boat fuel. We know you’re not satisfied with simply going hunting or fishing and then going home—so go the extra distance. You can take action on the conservation issues that matter right now. Click here to get started.