At least according to USA Today and Gallup, it is.
For the short amount of time it’s been in power, and the fairly small amount it’s actually managed to DO, this is pretty surprising. Why is this? Is it because of their own actions (William Jefferson in the news, earmarks being hidden despite promises not to, the very fact that they’ve not done much so far)? Or is it more external forces?
Polls generally show Americans have a higher approval of their own representative/senator than of Congress as a whole. It’s always been that way.
Well, yeah. But FOURTEEN percent???
Problem is they thought they got power to play politics, They were elected to make changes. They have not done nearly enough.
This isn’t surprising. A U.S. News & World Report article in early June reported Congress’s job performance rating was within the same margin of error as Bush’s (both were in the low 30s.)
I imagine there are many reasons for this. A lot of people are pissed about the immigration bill. A few of the promises made and not kept are probably big too, Pelosi’s grand promises about instituting reforms to stop corruption ended up being almost entirely bluster. While that’s unrelated to William Jefferson’s woes, his scandal couldn’t be helping. I also think many Democrats genuinely thought Pelosi was going to somehow end the war (foolishly) and if you look at a lot of the left-wing blogs many of them have turned rabid on the Dems and feel betrayed because that didn’t happen.
It’s because they pussed out on the deadlines. Pure and simple. They were elected to end the war. They chose to suck Bush’s ass instead. I vote thumbs down on them too.
William Jefferson has nothing to with it. That’s Republican wishful thinking at best. 9 out of 10 people have no idea who he is. No one who does know about him is going to change their ideology over him.
People are annoyed with the Dems in Congress because they won’t stand up to Bush. That’s really all there is to it.
Watch and see what happens during the next election. I’m predicting that no more than 90% of the incumbents get re-elected. That’ll show the sons of bitches. (Or 10% of them anyway)
Yes, It would be really nice if they did something for the people, like national healthcare. Alternative fuels, at least hit the oil companies with a windfall profits tax. I guess they are to busy lining their own pockets with lobbiest money. Yes, get rid of the lobbists.
A legislature can’t make changes without playing politics. Tomayto, tomahto.
And how do we do that in a way consistent with the First Amendment?
Well, here’s one way, but the SCOTUS has unwisely ruled it unconstitutional.
Agreed. They caved in, and cut their own political throat in the process. The right already hated them, and most everyone else opposes the war now. And they showed themselves to be weak, which always turns Americans off.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve handed the Congress back to the Republicans by caving in like that.
How is that Republican wishful thinking? What do I care why the country is pissed at Congress? I think the biggest factor is definitely the outraged left who bought into the idiotic notion that Pelosi was actually going to do something to end the war. However I think that we noticed a direct drop in approval ratings for both the President and Congress when this immigration bill started looking like it might actually pass. The public opposition to amnesty for current illegals has a wide base across the board. You have all kinds of different groups who do not want the bill to pass: Protectionists like Lou Dobbs, bigots, law & order types who don’t think people should be rewarded for coming here illegally and et cetera.
I have a lot of family from the Gulf Coast region, and they aren’t too pleased that during Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath William Jefferson commandeered some national guardsmen who were helping in the clean-up efforts to rescue some personal effects from his home. The Jefferson scandal may be one of the largest in scale (as far as money concerned, not outrage) we’ve seen in Congress in decades. There’s evidence that Jefferson bribed the Vice President of Nigeria (bribing a member of a foreign countries government may be a first in the history of congressional corruption) and so far we’ve uncovered at least $500,000 that he gained illegally, how much he actually stole is hard to put a number on thus far because he distributed it throughout his immediate family and has hidden it away fairly well.
I tend to have mixed feelings on lobbying groups. Groups of concerned people who share political interest should be able to form groups to wield increased importance to legislatures. I mean, imagine that me and you had some near-and-dear political issue we wanted addressed by our local congressman (obviously we’ll have to engage in a bit of imagination here.) Well, me and you together are just two voters. But what if we start an organization to promote our concerns, and we suddenly find twenty more people who feel the way we do. Then one hundred more, and then we start taking donations and eventually we’re a million strong with deep coffers and now, not only our local congressman but many congressmen have to listen to us, or suffer at the ballot box.
That’s the kind of thing citizens should be able to do.
The problem of course is lobbying groups, even the nicest, most grass-roots originated ones eventually become behemoths and start doing morally questionable things to the point where what they do starts to border on outright bribery. Ideally we would be able to do something about the latter without destroying an important political power of the people (the right to organize and affect public opinion on policy matter, and to pressure their representatives to listen to them.)
American confidence in major institutions (including banks, the media, the medical system, etc.) is fairly low right now and has been falling across the board for years, understandably. The only ones with good numbers are the military and religion.
As for Congress in particular, there was some hope that the Democrats might actually stand up to Bush and the Republicans and prevent the running of our country into the ground. Obviously, these people didn’t understand the perfection of our two party system and how deep the tentacles of The 1% go. Predictably, the Dems, once in power, found little reason to actually change anything. They have reneged on their entire 2006 platform minus the minimum wage hike, which was traded for 100 billion in blood money for the continued occupation of Iraq into the forseeable future. Other measures, such as (heh) ethic reform and the like have been gutted, because it doesn’t make any sense to actually do something about it. Why should they bite the hand that feeds them? Also, there’s been massive spending and pork, because they were embarrassed to be outdone by the Republicans in the past Congressional session. The Dems are supposed to be the big spenders, not the GOP, didn’t they read the script? They’re going to need to spend a couple trillion to make up for lost time, you see…
The only scraps thrown has been the Gonzogate/Attorney investigations. This is understandable, as the victims are the powerful and they have access to representation. Even in this case, it’s not clear that something will actually be done.
As others have stated, there’s a lot of anger for the immigration bill from both sides as well. Add all these factors together and you get 14%. A lot of people do work for the 1%, after all, although I’m unsure of their numbers. It’d be interesting to see how close to 14% it’d be…
Isn’t it common for approval ratings to nosedive quickly after people realize that a change in government doesn’t mean immediate change.
Clinton’s ratings dropped quickly as his first few months got tied up with gays in the military and Zoe Baird.
Hold on, folks – that poll didn’t measure approval rating, it measured “confidence.”
Its approval rating stands at 24%.
Oh, wait, that still sucks.
But seriously, if the Congress had failed to provide funds to the troops, regardless of larger issue of what to do about the war, I have no doubt that the approval rating would be 10% or less. I agree that Congress has not lived up to the expectations of anti-war Democrats, but let’s face it – those expectations are unrealistic. There’s no way that a very closely divided Congress is going to be successful in immediately shutting down a war.
You mean fourteen percent of the American public has confidence in the Congress?!
Things are worse than I thought.
Tris
Yeah, it would be great if Congress made our health care system even worse and raised gas prices even higher than they are now. That’s a sure way to help “the people.” :rolleyes:
Lobbyists represent you and me. You may not like that some groups of people have lobbyists, but I’m sure you don’t mind the lobbyists for, say, the Sierra Club or the Nature Conservancy. People have a right to try and affect the political positions of their elected officials and to support them by contributing money to their campaigns.
Furthermore, no one (besides Cunningham and Jefferson) is “lining their own pockets” with this money. Any money contributed by lobbyists goes to campaigns; its not a bribe.
The Dems need to sell the argument that they TRIED to stop the war with funding measures, but didn’t have the votes for an veto override, and need a Dem in the White House if we are to end the war. In the meantime, they should focus on an agenda that they CAN pass into law to show SOME accomplishment before '08 despite the divided government.