Oregon Public Broadcasting

Democrats came up just short Wednesday on a bill to protect 2 million acres of public lands.

The legislation would expand the Mount Hood wilderness and set aside thousands of acres in central Oregon.

The Senate has already approved the bill, and President Obama says he’d sign it.

The measure received a vast majority of the votes in the House – but it needed two-thirds, and fell two votes shy of that.

Kurt Schrader is a Democrat, and Oregon’s newest House member.

He says national Democrats made a tactical decision to fast-track the vote.

Kurt Schrader: “But they tried to push it quickly. And when you try to push it quickly, it requires a ‘suspension vote’ meaning you need to get two-thirds of the members in the House to vote ‘yes’. We came up just shy of that. We will easily get the majority when it falls back to a regular vote and comes up again.”

Democrats say they moved quickly to avoid any add-ons from gun rights lobbyists and other conservatives.

All five Oregon congressmen voted for the bill, including Hood River Republican Greg Walden.