OPINION: It's time to reconsider your vote

Did you vote for Trump last November? If you’re having second thoughts, you’re not alone.

In Nebraska, independent Senate candidate Dan Osborn believes some Republicans have buyer’s remorse about their vote: “They were sold a bill of goods.” In Kansas, a Republican Trump voter blamed his policies for bringing a bleak future for farmers “hell of a lot faster. So I’m pissed at him.” After six months of the current administration, it’s time for voters to see if it delivered what they anticipated. If not, they may want to reconsider or renounce their votes.

Did you vote for fewer inspections of meat on supermarket shelves, and airport delays caused by layoffs in the agencies involved? Did you vote for the largest outbreak of measles, due in part to anti-vaccine policies of the secretary of Health and Human Services? Did you vote for reducing staff at the National Weather Service, which tracks hurricanes or tornadoes and sends out public warnings? (The NWS field office responsible for alerting Guadeloupe County, Texas, about flooding lacked a warning coordination officer.)

Did you vote to drop 14 bunker bombs on Iran, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars which, according to the Defense Research Institute and the United Nation’s top nuclear scientist, will delay Iran’s path to a nuclear bomb by only several months — and perhaps drag the U.S. into yet-another foreign war? For a tax bill which the Albuquerque Journal wrote may lead to the closing of six to eight rural hospitals in New Mexico alone?

“We’re going to have troops everywhere,” said President Trump after sending troops and the National Guard into Los Angeles. Was your vote for that? Did you vote for eliminating public radio and public television, leaving some rural areas without a broadcast signal and killing off Big Bird and Elmo?

How about cuts in Medicare? Did you vote for dropping 12 million of your neighbors off care that keeps the poorest among us not only healthy but alive? Did you vote to save that money for tax breaks to the 1% and billion-dollar contracts for Elon Musk’s companies? Or for the just-passed bill adding $3.8 billion dollars to the national debt, which our children and grandchildren now must pay off? Or for doubling the exemption of estate taxes so the rich can leave up to $15 million tax-free to their descendants?

Are you in sympathy with the president’s plans to scuttle the Federal Emergency Management Agency and its grant program which funds cybersecurity training, combating domestic violence or disaster assistance? Already in Alaska, where half-million acres have burned this year, the state’s FEMA director “has been telling local officials to find other ways to pay workers who help people affected by fires,” according to the New York Times.

How about selling off public lands to developers? The podcaster of “Hunter Nation” announced, “I’m a Republican, and yes, I voted for Trump. But I didn’t vote for this.”

It’s not too late to put the brakes on running up the national debt by joining Democrats, Republicans and independent voters in reconsidering your vote and contacting their congressional representatives. Remember what you did not vote for, and seriously oppose, when next year’s elections come around.