Congress More Unpopular Than IRS (Or Communism)

The current Congress has reached a historic level of unpopularity. The most unpopular federal government agency, the Internal Revenue Service, is more than four times as popular as Congress. Even other groups commonly reviled in this country (such as bankers, lawyers, and oil companies -- even BP during the Gulf disaster) are all significantly more popular than Congress. Hell, even the idea of the United States going communist is 2% more popular than the current Congress!

The worst part of this is that this is not due to a misperception on the part of the American people. Congress has earned every single percentage point of their massive unpopularity. The country is still mired in a recession, millions of Americans are out of work and not nearly enough new jobs are being created, jobs are still being outsourced to foreign countries, there is a $15 trillion national debt, wages for workers have remained stagnant while their buying power has significantly declined, poverty is reaching record levels, housing prices continue to fall as foreclosures continue at a record-setting pace, and the incomes of the super-rich (the top 1%) has increased by over 270% while their taxes paid remained virtually what they were 30 years ago (creating a huge gap between the rich and the rest of America).


The American people knew who to blame for the recession, the job losses, and the vast inequality in wealth and income -- George Bush and the congressional Republicans. That's why they elected a Democratic president and put Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress in 2008. The hope was that the Democrats would do what was necessary to start to pull this country out of the Great Recession (like they did when returned to power in 1932 and started the process of bringing the country out of the Great Depression).

But that did not happen. It is true that a large part of this failure can be laid at the Republican doorstep, since they did everything in their power (including misusing the filibuster) to block everything the Democrats tried to do. But it is also true that the Democrats gave in to ridiculous Republican demands far too often, and allowed the failed Republican "trickle-down" economic policies to continue unabated (including extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich, watering down the new regulations on Wall Street, and turning health care reform into a giant payday for the private insurance companies).

Congress had an opportunity to act in a bipartisan way after the 2008 elections and take steps to heal the severely damaged American economy. President Obama and his Democratic cohorts actually tried to work with the Republicans (sometimes too much) to reach bipartisan solutions -- solutions that would not have given either side all they wanted, but could have started this nation's economic healing. But the Republicans put ideology and a return to power over the well-being of the American people, and the Democrats (thanks mainly to the blue dogs) were too divided and incompetent to adequately address the Republican intransigence.

Now we have a Congress that can accomplish nothing except to posture for the next election. And the American people are disgusted -- with both parties. They no longer see the Congress as being able to address the serious problems facing this nation, and they are right. That is why the Occupy Wall Street movement was started, and why it has appealed to many Americans across this nation. They want changes, and they see Congress as being incapable of delivering those changes.

Congressional gridlock may have been tolerated in the past when the nation's economy was healthy and jobs were plentiful, but that is no longer the case. That gridlock cannot be tolerated in the midst of the current economic crises, because it just keeps making that economic crises worse. That is why the popularity of Congress has sunk to such a historic low -- a well-deserved low.