diff --git a/sdk_container/src/third_party/coreos-overlay/coreos/config/make.conf.amd64-host b/sdk_container/src/third_party/coreos-overlay/coreos/config/make.conf.amd64-host
index 0faa0c9131..d682ba45aa 100644
--- a/sdk_container/src/third_party/coreos-overlay/coreos/config/make.conf.amd64-host
+++ b/sdk_container/src/third_party/coreos-overlay/coreos/config/make.conf.amd64-host
@@ -7,10 +7,6 @@ FEATURES="allow-missing-manifests buildpkg clean-logs -collision-protect
 # Since our portage comes from version control, we redirect distfiles
 DISTDIR="/var/lib/portage/distfiles"
 
-# Don't fool around with python3, might get bit
-USE_PYTHON="2.6"
-
-
 PORTDIR="/usr/local/portage/stable"
 
 # We initialize PORTDIR_OVERLAY here to clobber any redefinitions elsewhere.
diff --git a/sdk_container/src/third_party/coreos-overlay/profiles/base/make.defaults b/sdk_container/src/third_party/coreos-overlay/profiles/base/make.defaults
index ae189e38fe..af9832a410 100644
--- a/sdk_container/src/third_party/coreos-overlay/profiles/base/make.defaults
+++ b/sdk_container/src/third_party/coreos-overlay/profiles/base/make.defaults
@@ -127,6 +127,8 @@ BOOTSTRAP_USE="cxx unicode threads curl"
 # Default target(s) for python-r1.eclass
 PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_6"
 PYTHON_SINGLE_TARGET="python2_6"
+# TODO(marineam): remove USE_PYTHON during the 2.7 upgrade
+USE_PYTHON="2.6"
 
 # ChromeOS-specific: BOARD_USE for accessing board value in cros-board.eclass
 #                    CROS_WORKON_TREE for cros-workon