Great Lakes funding cuts are absurd, irresponsible, lawmakers say

Not so much. In addition to eliminating the initiative, Trump’s budget slashes funding to the Environmental Protection Agency by about a third and will eliminate about 50 other programs.

President Donald Trump has proposed a budget that would eradicate Great Lakes restoration funding and get rid of Community Development Block Grant money for cities across Michigan- but his proposal, if enacted, could impact Michiganders in dozens of smaller ways as well.

The Republican governor told the news media Tuesday in Milwaukee that the lakes are an asset to both the quality of life and commercial activities such as tourism.

Lake Michigan and other Great Lakes could see a substantial amount of federal funding dry up.

“These cuts would decimate everything we’re doing to try and protect Lake Michigan and the rest of the great lakes from pollution, from climate change, from invasive species”, said Jack Darin, head of the Illinois Sierra Club. Wisconsin alone has shorelines on two of the five Great Lakes in the region, with the nation’s longest continental shoreline in Door County along Lake Michigan. Experts fear this could have a devastating impact on the future of the Great Lakes.

Ohio’s two USA senators, Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican Rob Portman, have already raised alarms about the possible funding cuts. With healthy, prosperous ecosystems and habitats other areas of the country share in on the area’s ecological wealth, officials say. Killing the Gateway project will jeopardize the economy of the entire region, said Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.

The budget also cuts the climate protection budget by almost 70 percent and environmental justice programs by 79 percent, according to the AP report, which said the EPA and White House declined to comment.

Republican Congressman Jack Bergman, a Republican from Watersmeet who is in the beginning of his first term, called himself a “steward for the Great Lakes” and vowed to protect them from budget cuts. If the administration is successful getting its budget through Congress, crucial programs will be at risk.

Last year, NY communities received almost $300 million in Community Development Block Grants, a program that has provided flexible federal funding since 1974 for programs such as affordable housing development or services for seniors, people with disabilities, low-income children and others.

Stabenow says cutting the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative would open Lake Michigan up to the Asian carp, among other things.

The substantial increase to the Department of Defense outlined in Trump’s budget blueprint has the potential to benefit MI military contractors and bases. Previously, the federal budget has provided over $300 million in annual funding for the program.

Without federal support, “all of this restoration work would come to a halt”, he said.

And there’s this: Last September, at a presidential campaign forum hosted by the Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition, Trump campaign representative Mike Budzik said Trump was going to make the Great Lakes great again, according to the Detroit Free Press.