Of course they will. Is anybody saying they won’t?
And……. It’s not the money they’ll get from the sale they care about. That money will get spent in the blink of an eye. It’s the continual property tax revenue the State will recieve every year, from now to eternity. And when was the last time your property taxes ever went down. As the value of private property goes up, so do the tax revenues.
On the other had, if the Federal government owns it, they can control the States income, they can control what the land is used for, or not. How do like our over crowded acres of mustangs. How do you like the Feds controlling every drop of rain/snow water run off, how do you like government leases to wealthy land owners, for a dollar and a dime to graze their livestock, how do you like government locking up more and more Federal land for more parks.
In some countries, the government tells private land owners what plants they can grow and what price they can charge for the product. Are we headed there, with a government determined to “do what they believe is best for the whole population…… rather than allow free enterprise to establish what’s best to grow and decide what it can be sold for?
If you want to learn how this stuff has worked, in other counties, read Robert Michener’s book Poland and learn what really brought the USSR to its knees. (Hint: it was a government controlled economy and food production or the lack there of, in Poland.)
We have gotten ourselves boxed in, just as Vanilla has said.