The lofty-sounding Great American Outdoors Act recently passed the Senate and is poised to become law. But there’s nothing great about the legislation. The act creates a massive, permanent and mandatory expense line-item in the yearly American budget for the purchase of federal land. Not only is this federal land grab at odds with the Constitution, but with nearly one-third of the United States already in federal hands, one has to wonder: why does the national government need more land?

Today, the federal government owns approximately 640 million acres or 28% of the landmass of the United States. But all states are not created equal when it comes to public lands. There is an East-West geographical divide. The New York Times estimates that the federal government owns about 47% of all land in the West, but only about about 4% of land east of the Mississippi River. An astounding 80.1% of Nevada, for example, is federal land; Utah is 63.1% federal land; and the state where I grew up, New Mexico, is 31.7% federal land.

The Great Outdoors Act