House Budget Reconciliation Cuts Out the Heart of Alaska
By Hal Shepherd
The Trump administration's proposal for the 2026 Reconciliation Bill currently on the House Floor would slash the Department of Interior’s budget by $5 billion, a 30 percent cut from current spending levels. Greenwire reports that the cuts would be achieved in part by transferring some national park sites to states, cutting off research grant money to universities and achieving “deep reductions” at national monuments.
The latest in Trump's shock and awe campaign to “dismantle, defund, and divest” federal public lands, features conservation regulatory role backs, undoes resource management plans, drastically cuts federal staff, sells off, and mandates significant revenues from oil and gas leasing of public lands and waters. According to a press statement from the America the Beautiful for All Coalition, "[i]nstead of investing in improving our country's ecological health, House Republicans are proposing to exploit our public lands and waters to raise around $15 billion in new revenue to help pay for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts for billionaires."[1]
With the State’s over 322 million acres of Public Lands, the Reconciliation Bill would have enormous impacts on Alaska and Alaskans. While Congress ultimately has the final say over the budget bill, ever since Trump took office for his second term, the current Republican-led Congress has unfortunately, been unwilling to stand up against his attacks on the environment and public lands and, in some cases, has encouraged such tactics. While the initial draft, for example, had not included it due to bipartisan opposition,[2] the republican dominated House Natural Resources Committee recently voted to begin selling off hundreds of thousands of acres of public land in Utah and Nevada.
We are living in the new age of autocratic politics, illustrated by the fact that Congressional Republicans seem poised to endorse Trump's environmental destruction agenda, even though it is deeply out of step with the general public who, regardless of political affiliation, appose transferring national parks, historic sites or wildlife refuges to be managed under state law or rolling back permitting requirements for oil, gas and mining development. In addition, according to a poll released by the National Wildlife Federation, the Western public overwhelmingly opposes the rollback of ecosystem safeguards.[3]
Christine Peterson with High Country News states, "If Trump's current proposals become reality, advocates warn that the West as we know it will be permanently changed, home to neglected and shrinking public land with fewer national parks, diminished fish and wildlife, and increasingly out-of-control wildfires."
"This is short-term thinking at its absolute worst," said Walt Gasson, a fourth-generation Wyoming hunter and outdoorsman. "We are standing by letting people make decisions for us that don't reflect our own legacy, what we want to leave for our grandkids." Land Tawney, co-founder of American Hunters and Anglers, recently told HCN news, “Chaotic is one word for this…but crisis is another.”
Cutting $900 million from the agency budget – the equivalent of closing 350 national park sites, makes the proposed cuts to the National Park Service some of the most alarming and should be a major concern for the State of Alaska. In 2023, for example, the 3.3 million visitors to the 56.4 million acres of National Parks spent $1.5 billion in the State, which resulted in 21,274 jobs and a cumulative benefit of $2.3 billion to the State economy.
The good news is that pressuring the Alaska Delegation seems to be working, as the latest version of the Budget Bill that was just released appears to strike the proposed 211-mile Ambler Road provision, that was stopped by the Biden administration because if its impacts to the environment and local communities.
Please continue to call the Alaska Delegation:
Lisa Murkowski - Anchorage (907) 271-3735/ Washington D.C (202)-224-6665;
Dan Sullivan: Washington Office: (202) 224-3004/Anchorage Office:
Phone: (907) 271-5915;
Nick Begich: Washington, D.C. Office: (202) 225-5765//Anchorage Office: (907) 921-6575
Tell them stop listening to Trump and start listening to Alaskans - who overwhelming support protecting Alaska’s public lands and our outstanding fish and wildlife resources.
[1] American the Beautiful for All Coalition e-mail (May 13, 2025) (AtB4All e-mail).
[2] MATTHEW DALY AND MATTHEW BROWN, House Republicans push to sell hundreds of thousands of acres of public lands in the West, AP (May 7, 2025).
[3] AtB4ALL e-mail.