Someone should tell Sen. Sharon Nelson that the positions set forth in her March 21 commentary (“Gamesmanship brings gridlock to Olympia”) are inconsistent with truths she apparently finds inconvenient.

Is the polarization in Congress really due to Republican “gamesmanship”?

Evidently, it hasn’t occurred to Nelson that, instead, Republicans may be trying to avoid greater fiscal peril.

The U.S. Treasury reports that, in the Obama Administration’s 38 months, our national debt has increased by $5 trillion, more than during the entire eight years of the George Bush presidency. Total U.S. debt is now $15, 824.21 per each American.

Apparently oblivious to the dangers inherent in these facts, the administration’s 2013 budget includes $3.67 trillion in new spending and, per the Congressional Budget Office, will generate a $977 billion deficit, $75 billion more than the White House predicted. The administration’s 2009 stimulus legislation included $535 million in loan guarantees to a now bankrupt California solar panel maker called Solyndra, which taxpayers must now repay.

The Government Accountability Office estimates that the Democrats’ Dodd/Frank legislation could cost $2.9 billion, much of which will be borne by businesses that would otherwise create more jobs.

And then there’s the curiously named Affordable Care Act. Opposed by two out of three voters and the subject of a lawsuit filed by 26 states, this legislation is expected by the Congressional Budget Office to increase the cost of health care by $938 billion. Never mind that the legislation pushes the limits of federal power and has caused an unprecedented constitutional showdown in which individual liberty is at risk.

Legislatures in both Washington, D.C., and Olympia are at fault for their failure to pass legislation actually beneficial to the American people. For Nelson to claim, in knee-jerk partisan fashion, that responsibility for “gridlock and a toxic environment in Congress” belongs to the opposing party is, in the most benign possible word, childish.

Sen. Nelson, even if you don’t pay attention to the facts, your constituents do. And we vote.

— Anne Peck