Trump’s Latest Nominee Judy Shelton Supports Selling Public Lands to Deal with Trump’s Exploding Deficits

Touting the extremist view that in order to deal with Pres. Trump’s historic budget deficits, the federal government should sell off America’s public lands, Judy Shelton – President Trump’s latest Federal Reserve pick – faces her nomination hearing today.  

“The president has been forced to sell off assets after failing to balance the books before. Without a doubt, he has failed to balance America’s books by running up historic deficits in order to cover his tax breaks for billionaires,” Deputy Director of Western Values Project Jayson O’Neill said. “Given his bent towards bankruptcies, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Trump would consider Shelton’s crazy public land sell-off scheme, once again imperiling America’s outdoor heritage.” 

In her 2009 book, Shelton wrote that the U.S. government should sell-off its “numerous federal land holdings” in order to “expedite the achievement of a balanced budget.” Shelton’s beliefs were discovered through research by Western Values Project (WVP) — an Accountable.US project based in Montana, defending America’s public lands. 

Selling America’s public lands is an extremist idea and wouldn’t even be a possibility if Pres. Trump had not ballooned the federal budget deficit to nearly $1 trillion over the past four years. 

Shelton was nominated to the Federal Reserve Board in January 2020. At her nomination hearing today, she was lambasted for her views on public lands management. 

The Trump administration’s Interior Department has already shown a worrying trend towards the sale and/or transfer of public lands and has filled the department with anti-public land zealots like William Pendley and Karen Budd-Falen.