Congressional Approval Rating in Single Digits

Well, it’s official. In thirty-nine years of surveying, Gallup has never seen a single-digit approval rating for Congress. Until now! Americans straight up despise Congress, with only 9% of Americans giving Congress the thumbs up.

The approval rating wasn’t even this low during the shutdown. I’m guessing people aren’t even paying attention to current events anymore. We’re just out for more approval ratings records—to see how low we can get this thing. I wonder how many of us could keep our jobs with an approval rating of 9%? “Well, Simpson. We hate you. We hired you to do a fairly simple task: data entry. You can’t type. I don’t even think you know what a computer is. You lied on your application, didn’t you? But it’s not just that you’re incompetent. You’re also mean. I can’t actually think of any reason why we should continue employing you here. But… no matter. You just need to get back out there and keep trying. And, by the way, we approved your request for a raise.”

Many people want to blame the Tea Party for this. As if the congressional approval rating would be higher if only the Tea Party weren’t filibustering every little thing Congress wanted to do. It may be true that Tea Party candidates choose to stop up the expansion of government, but I fail to see why that would necessarily result in a sinking approval rating. A smaller government that more carefully legislates in line with the Constitution should have the highest approval rating of all. Unless the approval rating has nothing to do with the job Congress members have actually been hired to do. But 9% doesn’t even make sense. That means that at least some people who are entirely dependent on handouts from the civil government still hate Congress. That’s cold.

I actually don’t know exactly why there is so much bipartisan hatred for Congress right now. But I’m hoping that it eventually results in the effective destruction of the two-party system.

We’ll just have to see. Tomorrow, I’m sure Congress will choose to give away some more free stuff, and their approval rating should spike.

52 responses

  1. Keep allowing the dictator to do as he pleases, and it will be only a matter of time when congress will be inconsequential in our gov’t.

    • Unfortunately, the GOP already IS inconsequential and the democrats are ruining the country AND the people continue to RE-elect them.
      We have a country full of morons and it SHOWS. Hitler had his supporters, too. He called them “useful idiots.” They elected him and kept him in power. That about describes this country today.

    • They are inconsequential now, and they cost a lot of taxpayer money. We need a new system from bottom up. We need all these people like we need over 7,000 drones.

  2. Amazing they run the same meaningless poll over and over. Two houses of Congress. One really sucks and keep the other house from passing any legislation. As a conservative I think the Senate sucks nearly as much as the president. Think the president should have three choices, resignation, suicide or execution. Most dictators choose the final option when their backs are against the wall. Suspect our coward couldn’t be convinced to resign but would hold out like the Communist predecessors he has so admired.
    Remind all that Lenin considered control of healthcare the key to the totalitarian state.

    • A criminal should never escape accountability for his crime by resignation. Have they changed the definition of treason, to remove the “punishable by death” from it?

  3. Wonder if this poll was taken before or after 4.7 million Americans lost their healthcare ??
    If this keeps up, Congress will long for the glory days of 9%.
    Go TEA Party !!! You are the only group saving the nation and Constitution !!!

  4. Michael Minkoff: “I actually don’t know exactly why there is so much bipartisan hatred for Congress right now. But I’m hoping that it eventually results in the effective destruction of the two-party system.”

    Michael, I’m hoping it will engender a return to Yahweh as God, King, Judge, and Lawgiver, His son as Savior, and His immutable moral law as the perfect standard for all levels of society, including and especially government.

    In trying to save the Republic, Christians have all but lost the kingdom to the non-Christians and antichrists. Any solution (including a three-, four-, ad infinitum-party) other than Yahweh’s solution will only continue to perpetuate a system seditious to Yahweh and His kingdom.

    For more on how Yahweh’s law apply today, see our online book “Law and Kingdom: Their Relevance Under the New Covenant.” Click on my name, then our website. Go to our Online Books page, and scroll down to title.

  5. The reason the American people hate congress is that they have done NOTHING!!! They want this country to fail & have done EVERYTHING possible to make sure that happens INCLUDING shutting down the government & coming within a day of having us default on our debt! Instead of trying to move this country forward they spent all their time passing 40+ bills to end Obamacare that had ZERO chance of passing & blocking (by ANY means possible) every piece of legislation or nomination. This notion that the GOP wants to lower spending is absurd! They just want to take from the poor & give to the rich & NOTHING makes that more clear then the farm bill they tried to pass. The Two party system has already been destroyed! The GOP is no longer a nation party & cannot win a general election. They have been reduced to a regional party in the south & rural states

    • Let me ask you this Bob, and I don’t need a liberal rant from you, since it’s just a simple question. Hypothetically, if a republican was elected in 2016, and lets for the sake of argument it was Ted Cruz or Mike Lee, would you finally just leave the country? Or just eat crow like the rest of democrats when the country sees the lies fed to them? And this hypothetical, what is the house and senate do go to the republicans in 2014? What then? Would you finally shut up? Simple answers please, no rhetoric

      • You realize your “begging the question” Ted Cruz or Mike Lee have ZERO chance of EVER being elected president (take a look at an electoral college map) & because of the Cruz lead government shutdown debacle not only has any chance of the GOP taking the senate gone up in smoke but they may lose the house as well!!! But, since you asked if this hypothetical situation were to accrue & Cruz was elected president & the GOP took over congress I would not leave the country. In fact, I would actually make more money (assuming they lowered the capital gains tax). Now, let me give you a scenario that’s FAR more likely to happen. In 2016 Hillary Clinton is elected president along with a large majority on Dems in both the house & senate. What would you do? Leave the country? Eat crow? Shut up?

        • well i asked for no ranting, but I figured you wouldn’t abide. Anyways, as far as Hilary, honestly no I wouldn’t leave, can’t afford to. Plus no other country on Earth like ours, at least not until, more of our individual freedoms keep getting taken away. Eat crow? Possibly, but then again I have always said if Hilary ran she would more than likely win, just because she is a woman, nothing to do with her political standing. Shut up? Not likely. Patriots don’t go down quietly. However I’d probably be paying more attention to those prepper blogs…

          And on a side note, I really have to ask out of curiosity. If Capitalism is so great for you, as is lowering taxes, why do you hate Republicans and limited government so much? I’m honestly confused. I know you keep going on about “hungry kids” and what not, but that’s always been a problem in this country, not denying that. There are many charities and churches that try to help with this. You also don’t like food stamps, or farm subsidies. Why if you hate these democratic boosted programs, do you worship the democrats? The only reason I can think of, is you want a completely secular country, no religion at all, and abortion up to 3 years after birth. After reading many posts from you, that’s all I can conclude on.

          • Hillary is Obama all over again, a stinking liar, a stinking Socialist, who hates this country, and wants power and nothing more.

          • This idea that the GOP is for “limited government” is a myth. Republican Presidents Never reduce the size of government! Clinton reduced the size of government MORE than Nixon, Regan, Ford, Bush or Dubya! I don’t hate food stamps. What I hate is this idea of taking money from the poor (cutting food stamps) & giving it to the rich (farm aid). BOTH parties will spend EVERY cent + more they take in. The ONLY difference is how they spend it. The reality is the differences between the two parties on economics is marginal. Tax rates may go up or down a few percentages points depending on who’s in power, BOTH parties will expand welfare only the Dem’s will expand social welfare while the GOP will expand corporate welfare. The conservative movement was once lead by people like William F. Buckley Jr, Russell Kirk, Milton Friedman & a host of others. Who are the Conservative intellectuals today? Palin? Bachmann? Joe the plumber? Limbaugh, Beck? There are NONE! The GOP has gone MAD & morphed into a cult of Religious KOOKS! That have somehow become the Anti-intellectual, Anti-science party!The big difference between the two parties IS the social agenda & the GOP’s social agenda is straight out of the Dark Ages. This is the reason they have become irrelevant on a national level.

        • Did you know, if you turn off your ObamaPhone, and stop drinking the Kool-Aid, your headaches will stop – and the “voices” will go away?

  6. We must remember two things: 1) The majority of the rich people in America are liberals and Democrats; 2) MSM will make sure we never allow the liberal voters to find this out!

  7. I can understand the 9% approval rating when I look at what Minnesota has representing them in congress. Wake up, You just re-elected Amy Klobuchar for 6 more years. BIG MISTAKE! We need to vote Al Franken out in Nov. 2014. And all 8 of the congressional districts need to have a primary. There are too many who are just sitting on their butts and doing nothing except exempt themselves from Obamacare and draw big salaries.

  8. Yes, nobody likes congress. as far as employees go they are bad and should be fired. however only congress can remove a congressman. if we could do a voter recall of a congresman from the state district we would have much better co-operation. what do we need to do is get them talking without party influence.
    1. remove minority/majority positions in congress.
    2. remove quorum seating. have seating done by state name.
    3. committee head assignments to be based on seniority in congress, not by party.
    all of the above can be done by congress for congress.
    a. allow recall of a congressman by their state voters. a recall election done within the home state has no constitutional effect and impact currently.
    b. any law not expressly authorized by the constitution HAS to be approved by the state legislatures *yea or nay). it is ironic that we have not had a budget passed since 2008 but that a lot of laws expanding congress’s authority have been done.
    c. any law congress passes affects congress members just like citizens. no more exceptions.
    d. there should be something like an association of governors that approve or reject all matters involving congress salaries, benefits, travel allowances. would you let employees of yours set their own salaries, benefits, etc.
    all of the above A thru D would require a congressional amendment or two, preferably done by a constitutional convention.

    congress has gone too far for a long time. they were originally considered to be respectable, honorable citizens from different walks of life that were elected to a position of honor to represent their fellow citizens and improve the nation. what we have is a bunch of professional politicians whose only goal is to perpetuate their position and milk their influence for all the kickbacks they can. i am sorry to say that it seems to affect all congressman who stay in the morass of washington and/or politics.

      • No. see item “D” in the post about constitutional convention. It would be nice if they would do something like this if they were “honorable”. they are not, this is why i mention a constitutonal convention. In modern times this has never been done. the reason why is that as soon as people were getting serious about this congress behaved. the repeal of prohibition is a case in point. everything was getting set up to repeal prohibition via constitutional convention and congress woke up realizing their monopoly was coming to an end.

    • The only answer is to vote every one of them out of office. Every one. We have to show these people who they work for, and that their bosses are disgusted at their inability to get anything done.

  9. Yea so what come the election of 2014 the incumpos will win 99% of the time, or the voters in a few places will wake up and fire a few Dumbocrats. And replace them with got along Republicks and nothing will change except, well nothing will change.

  10. I simply refuse to read any comment made by Mr.Bob!
    Any one who would have a cross with a red X on it must have been sent here from hell and certainly holds an express ticket for their return trip! Pity the FOOL!

  11. Congress can blame themselves for this. Going against the executive branch, when you are in the same party gets you on the parties black list, and you basically torpedo your chances of moving up in the party. That is not the way it was supposed to work, but that is the way it does work. It is easy to go with the party line. Ill use Bush, because everyone already seems to hate Obama. There had to be some republicans against going into Iraq, and letting UN inspectors do their thing. That would have put us in a much better world wide political position than we are today. Who are they?

    There were 7. Most are no longer in office. Ron Paul was the most vocal. Was he right?

    The war cost $800,000,000,000.00 Dollars. EIGHT HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS. The Panama canal cost less than a billion.

    4500 young Americans are dead. Iraqis: 176,000–189,000 violent deaths including 134,000 civilians

    So, considering how we are viewed by the world today, was it worth it?

    • Dubya had a VERY dangerous tour of duty! He was protecting Kennebunkport (in between cocaine benders) from a VC invasion! Romney’s was even MORE dangerous! He had to try to convince the idle rich living on the French Riviera of the Planet Kolob (& we know how rude the French can be)! Also, Dubya only miscalculated the cost of war by a mere $1.7 TRILLION (claiming it would cost $50-$60 billion)

  12. Sorry, I go off on Tangents.

    Congress is full of go-along to Get-along Yes men who vote the party line. Just like North Korea.

    Our Republic is bereft of anyone with integrity or conviction of the heart. We had Ron Paul, but nobody listened to him.

    • Hi jagans, I think that had there been a paper trail, instead of rigged computers, our write ins would have put Ron Paul in the Oval Office of the White House. He was the only true patriot who realized what was going on. Did Obama have the votes counted in Spain as they said he would or not? Never heard either way. Had there not been criminals and crookedness going on in the RNC itself, Dr. Ron Paul would have been the republican nominee. Alas – since the new world order knew it was impossible to make Dr. Ron Paul into their puppet – the RNC followed their orders and made sure their puppet won again, whether you voted democrat or republican, and now we who backed Dr. Ron Paul are described by the nwo puppets, as probable terrorists.
      Remember shortly after the elections we were told that l42% of the registered voters turned out to vote. HITH could this happen? How did any candidate turn up with a negative vote count, unless the machines were rigged by our election officials to cast votes for an undesired candidate for the chosen winner??????
      To all those poor people who object to all voters having a picture ID to vote, and to all the Eric Holder’s and Obama’s who say that is to decrease the vote,
      I have one question. If they are too debilitated or poor or stupid to be able to obtain a picture ID for voting, how did they manage to get signed up for a free
      Obama cell phone so quickly???????

      • You cannot believe how many people I talked to after the election that told me they wrote in Ron Paul, yet he was not even mentioned in the MSM. Not once. I recently started looking into the military record of George Bush, and there is some really shaky things going on in his records too, according to those that have seen them. These guys that get elected are groomed for office many many years in advance by some entity. If you go back and listen to Ron Paul, everything he said would happen if we stayed the course is happening. He has to be frustrated as Hell. I know I am.

        • Now you can understand the frustration of Dr. Ron Paul, Jesse Ventura, Alex Jones and all the others who have strived for so long to awaken others still snoozing in their comfort zone of denial, and still don’t want to believe what is going on.
          Just read on that the House has finally filed charges of impeachment on Eric Holder. Let us hope that this time they do something besides putting on an act for We the People and continue to work together (in secret) to prevent any real justice from occurring. Heads should have already been rolling in IRS, but to date not a single person has been held accountable, and probably won’t be because the trail is going to lead right back to the White House in that activity, just as it most likely will in fast and furious.
          I am still praying for justice that will see those FEMA camps built for detainment and resettlement of American citizens overflowing with the warmongering, murderous inhumane elitists (your entity behind Obama is the new world order) and all their puppets, who are greedy for wealth and power over the entire planet, but trying to push it through under the guise of saving the over populated planet.

          • I like Jesse Ventura, he tells it like it is, and damn the rest of the idiots in the Republican Party. I liked his stance on water-boarding, saying that its was torture, pure and simple, and how we basically threw away the Geneva Convention as a rule of conduct by using it. We lost a lot of moral ground there. You cant change animals by becoming one yourself, and its been proven time and again that people being tortured will tell you anything you want to hear if you do it enough.

            He did a lot for his state in the short time he was governor, but I guess people like Sarah Palin better because she quit.

  13. Something I think gets overlooked is the reason the Dems continue to have a better rating than the Repubs; its not because America likes what the Dems are doing better, but because America is pissed at the Repubs for not doing more, while objecting to the Dems for doing too much. We aren’t mad at the Repubs because of what they are doing but because of what they are not doing.

    • Really? I thought it was because people that don’t work, and have time to take surveys, like getting stuff for free from people that do work, that don’t have time for dumb axe surveys. Hmmm, fooled me.

  14. So….this poll means that the time has come to impeach ALL OF CONGRESS, THE SENATE, AND OBOZZO . Let’s not switch until we lies the whole country

    The time has come to TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY!!!!!

  15. I think the 9% approval rating is due to more people waking up to the fact that we have not had 2 opposing parties for decades, and we have grown tired of their play-acting posturing that ends up with both parties working together to bring the one world global government, aka the new world order, to fruition. We are tired of congress tossing the ball from one to the other, and all of them refusing to take any real action to stop the tyranny and insanity of this administration, as the House is now doing in their “We have the votes to impeach Obama and Holder in the House but it would just die in the democrat controlled Senate” or another excuse heard lately is that “Boehner or Reid would never allow it to be brought up for a vote”. These excuses no longer work with We the People once we wake up to the fact that there is no difference between the 2 parties now. For any who may still think otherwise, go view the videos of Papa and Son Bush espousing the new world order. Both of them are republicans. You will also find videos of Bill Clinton (Bill Clinton Agrees With Bush) and Obama doing the same. Bill Clinton even makes the statement that from Harry Truman on, all presidents, whether democrat or republican, have pushed for the new world order. This is open admission that they have all been working to overthrow our government, and each one of those videos are proof of TREASON. Many others have most likely been watching very closely what has been going on in this administration, and wondering why none of our congressional members who are lawyers haven’t realized this and taken action to stop the TREASON. Obama and his shadow government are not holding us hostage alone – apparently the majority of our congressional members and supreme court are working with them to hold us hostage. The problem is not an overpopulated planet, as the elitist claim, it is the greed and lust for power that drives them to commit inhumane acts like the holocaust against humanity.
    Remember when Obama was working to get his internet “kill switch” bill passed?
    The senate blithely went along with it, one of them remarking, “he already has that anyway”. How come we never heard of SOP 303 before now, when a judge ruled that DHS provide the kill switch document to those requesting it. DHS at first denied having one, bud did eventually find Standard Operating Procedure 303 and provided a copy of it, after deleting or blacking out a good bit of it. It was printed under Son Bush’s watch, so now we know what that senator meant when he said he already had it. We are fed up with lies and more lies from our legislators. We are fed up with the criminal activity of this and past administrations that has the rest of the world saying that we have the most corrupt and evil government of the entire world. We are tired of a corrupt government putting us in the position of aiding and abetting criminal activity such as the fast and furious gun program, Benghazi and the supplying military weapons to known Hamas terrorists, the IRS targeting Conservative groups, we are tired of having a criminal holding the position of our Attorney General. We are tired of lies and more lies by this administration to cover one scandal after another. We are tired of learning from other governments that our government is using our tax money to fund the Muslim Brotherhood. As I have told my elected officials: Any time you want to know what a terrorist looks like, go look in a mirror.
    The majority of our legislators don’t deserve a 9% approval rating. They have earned imprisonment or worse, because they have been acting as traitors for most of those past 39 years of higher ratings.

  16. I would like to know the individual rating of each congressmen and senators. Let’s see who has the approval and who doesn’t!!!

      • I don’t believe that is always the case. Today with the problems with OBamacare I want to know if the dems are having issues with their numbers from let say 1 month ago. I guess the same with the republicans.

  17. The end of the month is coming up. the obamacare website, insurance cancellation and several score problems will not be fixed. this will be a trigger point for democrats to jump ship on SS Obamacare. If you recall the theater going on in congress, >you aint seen nothing yet!<. it wlll be amusing to me to see some democrats claim they were misled, lied to and other excuses to keep their re-election hopes alive.

    the problem with the way obamacare like several bills were passed was with tryanny of the slight majority. Further we realize that both parties were supporting their party and not the taxpayer. what was missing from all of this was a sincere desire to gather requirements for this from doctors and citizens. a method of gathering performance metrics in the development and a method of modifying the bill easily if things were not perfect. Instead they performed an exercise in futility, arrogance and micromanagement

  18. Funny sort of, how those responsible for electing worthless congress critters…put them down so far…then still re-elect them the NEXT time…Don’t make sense!

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