GREAT LAKES Program inspires rare bipartisanship

Associated Press

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich.

Nowhere has the fervor to cut government down to size been more dramatically on display than in the industrial Midwest.

Republicans have seized control of statehouses across the traditional battleground region, where they’ve slashed budgets with a vengeance. Their counterparts in Congress have waged war with Democrats over federal spending, led by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, architect of blueprints that renounce “earmarks” for local projects and even target Social Security.

But there’s a 94,000-square-mile exception to the GOP’s crusade to starve the federal beast: the Great Lakes.

For all their indignation about government overreach, Republicans in the eight-state region are matching Democrats’ enthusiasm for an array of federal programs benefiting the inland seas, from dredging harbors to controlling invasive predators.

When a House subcommittee this summer tried to cut 80 percent of President Barack Obama’s Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, which has pumped $1.3 billion into 1,700 grants for cleanups and research since 2010, alarmed Republican freshman David Joyce of Ohio weighed in to get most of next year’s money restored. A bipartisan parade from neighboring states is backing his push to get the rest of the money.

Where the Great Lakes are concerned, party politics stops at the water’s edge.

It’s explained partly by the lakes’ equal importance to the economy and the environment. They supply the drinking needs of more than 30 million people, support 1.5 million jobs and generate $62 billion in wages annually. They’re home to more than 3,500 plant and animal species. And the lakes are cultural icons.

In Congress, vote-rich states such as Illinois and Ohio, along with neighboring Pennsylvania and New York, pack a punch when they stick together.

“The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative is among the most fiercely defended programs in the country,” said Andy Buchsbaum of the National Wildlife Federation. “The last two years, Congress has given it the exact level of funding the president called for in his budget. That’s almost unheard of, given the partisan toxicity right now.”