Kerby Anderson

The federal government owns about a third of America. That statistic may sound absurd to you if you are living on the East Coast, but it probably sounds about right if you are living in the Western part of the U.S. Decades ago, I rode by horseback through the Bob Marshall wilderness. It took nearly a week to ride through the one million acres, camping along the way.

I have had some guests on my program suggest that we could pay down our national debt by selling off some federal land. The Secretary of the Interior estimates that it may be worth as much as $200 trillion.

John Stossel did an interview with an environmentalist with The John Muir Project and the man who directed the Bureau of Land Management during President Trump’s first term. As you might imagine, the environmentalist wants to keep federal land locked up and is concerned with what she calls “our biodiversity crisis.”

John Stossel reminds us that we often have discovered that the government doesn’t manage things well. He suggests that selling or leasing some of this land would leave it in a better condition.

His guest who ran the BLM explained, “The best forest managers are tribes and states because they’ve got skin in the game.” He also added that governors in Utah and Nevada agree and want the government to release some land that is supposed to be used for “multiple-use.”

I applaud John Stossel for doing the interviews. This is a discussion we need to have. We need to ensure that any land sold does not end up in the hands of enemies like China. And we need to provide oversight for the development of federal land that is sold so that it does not pose an environmental threat.

Let’s have a national discussion and an honest debate about selling some federal land and paying down our national debt.