We’re not sure why President Donald Trump proposed stripping 90 percent of the federal funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. In his initial budget proposal, the president outlined a plan to cut $300 million from the program.

It could be simply Trump’s “Art of the Deal” approach, an opening salvo for his budget negotiations with Congress later this year.

It could be his budget team simply misunderstood the president’s intentions and mistakenly put the cut into Trump’s budget proposal.

Or, it could be the president really wants to eliminate the program and let market forces determine the fate of Lake Erie, the Great Lakes and the entire Great Lakes region.

But whether Trump’s reasoning is any of those, or something else, makes no difference in the final analysis. All of them are unacceptable, and just plain ill-advised. The Great Lakes are not negotiable, or a negotiating item.

It’s both insulting and frightening, frankly, the administration could even propose such a cut, and it reveals a stubborn ignorance. Yes, Mr. President, human beings do impact the environment and we must invest our tax dollars to protect it. Ever heard of algal blooms?

If Trump gets his budget enacted with this cut intact, it would damage the health of our environment and our economy in extraordinary and devastating ways…
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— The Sandusky Register