House Representatives Not Happy with Barack Obama’s Attempt to cut Great Lakes budget

Yet another attempt by US President Barack Obama to improve the federal deficit by slashing the budget for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) has met with resistance from the House representatives.

On Tuesday, the US President tried to cut the budget for the GLRI by $50 million (from $300 million to $250 million) even as House representatives demanded that money be allowed to flow for the project. This was probably President Obama’s last bid before his tenure ends, in a series of several such attempts over the past two years.

The GLRI was launched in 2010 to restore the Great Lakes ecology, a move that followed the finding of Asian carp DNA in samples of Great Lakes water. The discovery had ignited fears among ecologists that the highly invasive Asian carp could invade into a new territory. However, it could not be known yet whether the fish DNA was found due to a stray fish being carried by a hungry bird or it made a surprising, 10-foot leap over the electric fence designed to keep it out.

“It’s really important that we stress that this isn’t just an environment program that we want so we can fish and go to the beach, this is really important to our economy… This is who we are as a region”, said Tim Eder, the executive director of the Michigan-based conservation organization, the Great Lakes Commission.

Obama’s attempt at checking the fiscal deficit notwithstanding, several House representatives fear that the cuts in grants could stop the progress on a conservation project that could affect not just environment of a key water body but also hit the US economy in one way or the other.

Mr. Eder warned that if the fish did invade the Great Lakes, they would prove very devastating for the ecology as well as the value of the Great Lakes.