Have you noticed that no matter how bad Congress's approval rating gets -- the missed deadlines, the missed opportunities, the eternal gridlock -- it rarely gets bad for individual members.
Rasmussen tells us Congress has an approval rating of 1 percent; Gallup gives it a confidence rating of 10 percent at best.
A little hard to believe.
It would mean, of313.9 million Americans, anywhere from 3 million to 31 million think Congress is doing a good job. Even subtracting half of that number as too young to poll, who are these millions of people who think Congress is just dandy?
The last Gallup poll placed government's broken branch dead last in the hearts of the American people. Dead last, that is, among 16 institutions in a survey that included banks, the U.S. Supreme Court and the presidency. The United States Congress came in behind organized labor and health maintenance organizations in public confidence.
So, you would think a body shouldering such epic low regard might sit up and take note. Less than 17 months away from the next election, members of this dysfunctional Congress can't come to a consensus even on issues where the public shows a 90 percent agreement.
Still undone are the nation's biggest-ticket items: sequestration, the budget deficit, a loophole-riddled tax code, a bevy of gun-control legislation and a Senate revamping of immigration laws. Hot as it is in the news, the doubling-due-to-dithering of the Stafford college loan interest rates is chicken feed by comparison.
Watch for more dissension. Republicans in the Democratic-controlled Senate threaten to block President Obamas nominees to lead the Environmental Protection Agency and Labor Department. And leaders in the Republican-run House are saying let's revive the farm bill and pursue a piecemeal approach to immigration -- not the broad plan the Senate passed 10 days ago.
What a mess.
Michael Dimock, director of Washington's nonpartisan Pew Research Center, claims even if lawmakers were to pass an immigration compromise now, it wouldnt be enough to change public opinion of Congress as impotent to address the nations top challenges. One success in a row is not a pattern. Dimock said.
These guys we elected must be out-of-their-minds terrified of incurring voters' wrath in 2014, right?
Wrong.
Most congresspersons know they're pretty much embedded at the Capitol for life, if they so choose. Rarely does it matter how much force they exerted to create government delay or how much good they did to break the gridlock.
Here's the fact: Most voters like and are willing to re-elect their own member of Congress. It's the other guy's they can't stand. He/she is the one pollsters hear about when the surveys are taken. Conservative Republicans like me are perfectly happy to re-elect our own, while at the same time wanting to throw out Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Liberal Democrats want to see Mitch McConnell and John Boehner take a hike, but they'll give to Pelosi and Reid's campaigns until it hurts. And so it goes.
Check out OpenSecrets.org. For the last three election cycles available -- 2006, 2008 and 2010 -- the re-election rates for the U.S. Senate are 79 percent, 83 percent and 84 percent. For the House of Representatives, those numbers are 94 percent, 94 percent and 85 percent.
Florida is a great example of a state with what the British would call an "I'm all right, Jack" philosophy of political life. Floridians are serial whiners about Congress. But last year, of 27 members of the House, they dumped only three incumbents -- David Rivera, Allen West and in the primary Cliff Stearns. And none of those losses had as much to do with dissatisfaction of service on the House floor as they did with issues of alleged misconduct back home (Rivera) or a personality clash in a redrawn new district (West and Stearns).
The bottom line is this -- and it's a sad, tragic one: Congressional approval ratings can fall through the floor -- go to zero. It won't mean diddly. These guys are going to continue to get re-elected because the folks back home apparently are blithely undemanding of their own. If we want to de-tangle the congressional traffic jam, we'll have to come up with some way other than relying on the old next-election, "throw the bums out" theory.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423.
