Eugene T. Paslov: Congressional Republicans up to their old dirty tricks

The Congressional Republicans are getting ugly. They refuse to do what they were elected to do - negotiate, compromise and implement legislation.

The Senate Republicans tried every possible parliamentary trick to prevent the 60 Democrats from moving forward on health care reform; they even tried to hold up military spending, potentially harming our troops.

These do-nothing Republicans forced the Democrats to read aloud amendments, which took hours and wasted taxpayer money. They made no contributions to improve the bill. Some of them also reverted to the "death panel" lies and generally engaged in fearmongering.

Several Republicans - Tom Coburn (Okla.) and Jim DeMint (S.C.) in the Senate and Michele Bachmann (Minn.) and minority leader John Boehner (Ohio) in the House - held prayer sessions before the vote, presumably to compel God to cause debilitating sickness on one or more of the 60 Senate Democrats who agreed to support the health care bill.

Surely these neo-cons are on the lunatic fringe of politics. I sincerely do hope citizens of this country and of our state will vote the "party of no" out of office, including Sen. Ensign and Congressman Dean Heller.

The "party of no" promised to turn its attention to defeating not only the health care conference committee's work for improving the bill, but also defeating any climate change initiatives the Obama Administration will propose during the next year. They are also going to try to defeat regulations designed to protect consumers from greedy financial institutions; they will continue to look for ways to provide tax breaks for their corporate sponsors. It appears the Congressional minority is up to its old, ugly tricks.

The only goal of the "party of no" is to defeat the president and to reinstall a variation of the failed Bush policies. Recall, Congressional Republicans during the Bush administration promulgated half-lies (weapons of mass destruction and "mushroom clouds" ready to descend upon us), endlessly repeating the lies until the country believed them. This is exactly what the "party of no" is doing today.

I strongly encourage all those who voted for President Obama in '08 and those who want Nevada to continue to do well in the Congress to support the president and Sen. Reid. They need our help through calls, e-mails, Twitter, YouTube and any other forms of contact. Let the "party of no" know that we are not going to be fooled again.

• Dr. Eugene T. Paslov, former Nevada superintendent of schools, is a board member for Silver State Charter High School in Carson City.