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Budget Cuts Series: Trump Called for Gutting Great Lakes Restoration Initiative for THIRD Time, Then Said Nevermind
For over two years, Smart Dissent's Budget Cuts Series has exposed Trump's proposed budget cuts, finding savage proposals hidden beneath the surface. The Trump White House proposed their third budget in mid-March 2019 and we're wrapping up our Series by posting exclusively about it this week.
In today's Budget Cut Series we're talking about Trump again attempting to gut the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative before changing his mind when someone told him he's an idiot.
In what is becoming a yearly ritual.... Trump's budget proposal.... is recommending steep cuts in the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, which typically spends around $300 million every year to clean up the world’s largest system of freshwater lakes.
Just as it did last year, the budgetary wish list that Trump is sending to Congress for 2020 suggests cutting the program to $30 million. The first budgetary proposal Trump sent to Congress aimed to zero out the program in 2018.
Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown said the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative has helped protect, maintain, and restore Lake Erie’s chemical, biological, and physical integrity.
This is all about Republican efforts to gut spending on our environment, ie our one and only Earth.
The Great Lakes program cut is part of a Trump administration effort to chop $2.8 billion from the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget - a 31 percent cut.
The Great Lakes system is one of the greatest natural resources and economic powerhouses in the United States.... provides over 1.5 million jobs, provides 90% of our nation’s supply of fresh water, supports 3,500 species of plants and animals, and generates $62 billion in economic output.
In response, elected officials from both parties told Trump he's a complete fool, yet again, so he folded.
....throughout Trump’s presidency, Congress has refused to cut federal Great Lakes programs that are producing results in communities across the region. The Trump Administration’s budget fails the Great Lakes and the communities which depend on them for their drinking water, public health, jobs, and quality of life....
Less than a month after proposing a federal budget that would have cut Great Lakes cleanup money from $300 million to $30 million, Trump pledged to provide the full $300 million during a campaign rally in Michigan.
What an idiot.
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