Congress Struggles Through Low Approval Ratings

These are tough times for the Democratic-led U.S. Congress, where partisan battles have led to little progress on big issues and have made lawmakers collectively less popular than President George W. Bush.

So how do they explain congress’ dismal ratings?

Congress, typically never all that popular to begin with, starts the second half of 2007 with an anemic job approval rating of about 25 percent, down from 43 percent in January, with one Gallup poll ranking lawmakers at 14 percent.

By qualifying their statement by saying congress was never popular anyway. We never hear any kind of excuse like this for the president’s rating. And then there is this:

Experts attribute the woeful rankings to an inability to force a change in direction in Iraq, the priority Democrats campaigned on to gain power in both the House of Representatives and the Senate in last November’s elections.

But that is not all. There has been little to show on other priorities, including a change in Social Security and other entitlement programs that will run out of money in the years ahead, in addition to overhauling a health care system that has left millions uninsured and a broken immigration policy.

In other words, they are the do-nothing congress that they claimed the Republican led congress was.

Harry Reid had an interesting quote about their approval ratings:

“I’m not really much for polls,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

What I find really interesting about this poll, if not ironic, or better yet, hypocritical, is the fact that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, and all the other Democrats have been sighting polls as a reason we need to surrender in Iraq. But now that the polls don’t work in their favor, they say they don’t pay attention to them. Isn’t that funny how it works? The Democrats suffer from selective polling data. If they like the polls they listen to them, if they don’t like them, they don’t care about them.