GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan — At Thursday night's Make America Great Campaign rally, President Donald Trump said that he would fund the $300 million for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.
"I support the Great Lakes," Trump told the crowd. "They're beautiful, they're big, very deep, record deepness."
Trump made the announcement by calling it "breaking news."
This is a shift from Trump's budget proposal, which slashed the GLRI budget by 90 percent.
Some details of the proposal were released on March 11, and it called for spending $30 million on the Great Lakes cleanup project. Most years since the project was started in 2010, it has received $300 million from the federal government.
The president has tried to cut the budget for the Great Lakes program for three years in a row. This year, it was again met with criticism from both Republican and Democrat lawmakers.
Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Zeeland) and Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Midland) attended the rally, and Trump said the project would be funded in honor of his friends.
"This is what we've had in the past, and we've had to fight for it—both with the Obama administration and with this administration in the past," said Huizenga.
Trump specified that he was going to get the full $300 million for the GLRI.
The GLRI was created to remove toxic pollution, fight invasive species and deal with other environmental problems in the eight-state region.
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