House Republicans are moving to defund Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's recent attempt to create out of regulatory whole cloth a new category of public lands known as "Wild Lands."
The policy would potentially put another 220 million acres of public lands located mostly in the resource rich areas of western states off limits for any kind of development.
The Continuing Resolution to fund the government for the balance of the 2011 fiscal year must be approved before the current CR expires in March. Rep. Rob Bishop, R-UT, is glad the new CR denies funds for Salazar's bureaucratic edict.
“Cutting funding for the Wild Lands policy is an important first step as we seek to stop this administration from tightening its heavy-handed bureaucratic stranglehold on public land communities and users across this country. I thank Congressman Mike Simpson (R-ID) for taking the lead on this provision and I look forward to fighting the Wild Lands policy all the way to its ultimate extinction,” Bishop said in a statement.
 Go here for a previous Beltway Confidential post on the Wild Lands issue.