Well, the almost completely dysfunctional, Tea-Party-clogged U.S. Congress is sitting at its lowest approval rating in history. As mentioned in the title, and in the chart below, it’s less popular than the IRS (by far), lawyers (by far), Nixon during Watergate (by far), and the U.S. switching to communism! It’s also less popular than banks, the oil and gas industry, BP during the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and Paris Hilton in 2005 — hard to be less popular than all that!
Why is Congress so unpopular?
Well, with an approval rating like that, I’m sure there are a ton of different reasons hundreds of millions of people around the U.S. is upset with our Congressional “leadership.” However, besides what people might say, I think there are some core reasons:
Tea Party Congress people have been holding our country hostage. Rather than give in on some truly extreme demands, like trying to kill the Clean Air Act, they have nearly started a government shutdown (which some actually had the ignorance to say would be good for the country). They’ve also kept clearly beneficial jobs bills from getting passed. And they seem to have 0 interest in addressing climate change, a critical problem of our day, by investing more strongly and clearly in clean energy, the economic driver of this century.
Instead, they are dead set on NOT cutting tax loopholes for the super rich, and NOT taking back the $4 billion a year the oil industry gets in tax breaks each year.
If the Tea Party (i.e. Republican) members of Congress were to tax the rich fairly, tax the oil and gas industry, and invest that money in job-creating clean energy, I guarantee you the public would notice and its approval rating would rise considerably.
But why would they do that, when they care about the rich, not the U.S. citizens who elected them (but can easily be bought with campaign ads and lying slogans paid for by the rich)?
This is a great summary of the matter from Colorado Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet on MSNBC’s “Daily Rundown”: “for the last year or so this town has effectively come the land of flickering lights, where the standard for success is somehow you kept the lights on for the month where the rest of the world isn’t waiting for us to figure out how we’re going to meaningfully participate in the 21st century economy.”
Too true.
Congressional Approval Chart via Washington Post
