Congress Approval Ratings Plummet

[Lucky Shot]

Congressional Approval Ratings plummet to it's lowest level in 10 years. The LA Times reports that ...

Just 27% of Americans now approve of the way Congress is doing its job, the poll found, down from 36% in January, when Democrats assumed control of the House and the Senate.

Could this be because only one piece of the "First 100 Hours" agenda has become law? Is it because the Speaker of the House is more fascinated with jet travel then leading? First she needed a bigger jet, then she visits her constituents in the middle east, greenland and europe, and now she wants her kids to fly at taxpayer expense. So it begins, at 27%, how low can it get?

Lucky Shot

[ScratchMonkey]

Welcome to the aristocracy.

With our age of instant electronic communication, why do we even need a capitol? They should be able to do their jobs from their home towns.

[ednos]

It can get down to 0%, because the congressmen themselves do not comprise of even 1% of the population.

ScratchMonkey: that's a security risk.

[xTYBALTx]

Hey, Ehud Olmert is at 3%!

[AMosely]

I think it will get lower for both the Congress and for the President. Perhaps the lowest ever for both. I think it's safe to say that more than 75% of the population is frustrated with the entire govnernment, let alone their particular political party. If there was an approval rating for the supreme court, that would be low as well. The nation is about as divided as it can get, and neither side is getting traction right now.

The question on my mind is how this will pan out in next year's elections. It's hard to vote for change when both main political parties are failing so miserably.

[Steeler]

Somehow I don't think most people care about jet shenanigans, since no one really knows about it or why they should care. I think the main reason the congress's approval is so low is because we're still making no progress in Iraq, and the election was in good part about that.

[TheFeniX]

Who can blame people. Democrats sweep Congress and make bold claims about massive changes and we get what? What exactly have they done? What heads have rolled?

Status Quo! Ahead Full!

I know a lot of people here have an issue with Jon Stewart, but just watch clips from his show the portray Congress. The man doesn't even need to really say anything, the comedy writes itself.

Somewhere along the way, the entire Democratic party got spine-ectomies.

[USN_Squid]

Originally Posted by Steeler

Somehow I don't think most people care about jet shenanigans, since no one really knows about it or why they should care. I think the main reason the congress's approval is so low is because we're still making no progress in Iraq, and the election was in good part about that.

I don't have the numbers in front of me, but out of the seats the Dems took in the last election very few of them were anti-war, or even close to the Pelosi/Reid line of "re-deployment". Do you have any information about that?

[ScratchMonkey]

Originally Posted by ednos

ScratchMonkey: that's a security risk.

How so? Please enlighten me.

With them spread out you can't kill them all at once, as happened in one Tom Clancy novel involving a jet liner just before 9/11.

[War.mongeR1]

Ok, here's how I see it. With our fast-paced, modern society, American's just can't be satisfied anymore. Ignorant to the way the system works, people these days want instant results. The Republican congress was doing a bad job according to the voters, so they elect a Democratic controlled congress and things aren't changed instantaneously, thus people are upset. I believe I'm giving a pretty unbiased view. I don't know if Congress is necessarily doing a bad job, I mostly think that people are just harder to please. Am I right?

[OrdoSanguis]

I agree with you. Although Congress does do a lot of stupid crap sometimes, stuff unrelated to government. Like Pelosi and her jet.

[Melee]

I'm no political commentator, but I beleive that most people are fed up because they feel that politicians are more interested in doing what they believe will get them re-elected than what is right. Examples:

- pork barrel projects (i.e. bridge to nowhere) that no one in their right mind would approve, but get included in legislation that is completely unrelated all in the process of you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.

- passing immigration legislation that the general population is up in arms against.

And Lucky's point about the jet travel has merit, because it is the time and expense of our military that goes to shuttle these people around. The military is not an Air Force - make Congress fly commercial with everone else. That will go a long way toward improving airport security. No corporate jets...period.

Which leads me to another issue with their ratings. People feel Congress is out of touch with the population because most of the members are considered "rich", which is apparently what it takes to raise enough campaign dollars to get elected.

[ednos]

Originally Posted by ScratchMonkey

With them spread out you can't kill them all at once, as happened in one Tom Clancy novel involving a jet liner just before 9/11.

It's not a matter of killing them. I'm talking about Internet security. I think there's one form of encryption that's proven uncrackable, but it's unreliable and way too expensive, and probably impractical at distances over a hundred yards.

[Evo<^|SiNz|^>]

I'll tell you the single biggest reason for Congress' low approval rating right now:

Voters put Democrats in power because they ran on the platform that they would get American out of Iraq. They have utterly failed in making any sort of meaningful change in Iraq policy, let alone get our troops out. They caved to the GOP when they demanded withdrawal timeline language be taken out of the supplemental spending bill last month. It will come up again in a month and a half, but Democrats have consistently thrown in the towel in the face of the GOP's highly effective parliamentary stalling tactics. Case-in-point this week on the earmarks issues. Quite frankly, the Democrats are more concerned with having the weekend off than pushing their legislation through Congress.

My point is, Democrat voters are pissed at Congress because they broke their promise that they'd get the U.S. out of Iraq, and Republicans disapprove of Congress because it's a Democrat majority at the moment.

[Beatnik]

^^ good points. They ran on a ton of reform issues and not much has been done at all.

I am however happy to see at least an appearance of exercising the checks and balances over the executive branch. Not that they've been that effective so far, but the Republican majority was little more than a rubber stamp for the White House, and we all know what that did for the country.

Still, voters need to hold their feet to the fire and get some real reform (earmarks, out of control spending, immigration, etc.) done already.