US approval of Congress hits record low: poll

The Washington Post/ABC News poll found
that just 14 percent of the US public approves
of the job Congress is doing
© AFP/Getty Images/File Mark Wilson

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) – After months of partisan gridlock, more Americans of all political stripes disapprove of the US Congress than at any point in more than two decades, a poll found Wednesday.

The Washington Post/ABC News poll found that just 14 percent of the US public approves of the job Congress is doing, less than just before elections in 1994, 2006 and 2010, which all saw the majority party lose the House.

The poll found that just three percent of Americans “strongly approve” of lawmakers’ performance — “essentially as low as possible, given the poll’s margin of error of four percentage points,” the Post said.

The last nine months have seen bruising battles between US President Barack Obama’s Democrats, who control the Senate, and rival Republicans, who retook the House in last year’s mid-term elections.

The bickering came to a head in August, when fierce fighting over a plan to reduce the country’s ballooning deficit brought the country to the brink of a devastating debt default and led Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the once-sterling US credit rating for the first time ever.

Obama has blamed Republicans for slapping down his proposals to revive the economy, while the Republicans have said that the sputtering recovery and their 2010 election victory prove the president’s policies have failed.

The Washington Post/ABC News poll found a narrow majority support Obama’s new jobs package and that he enjoys a 49 to 34 percent advantage over congressional Republicans in terms of the public’s trust on creating jobs.

US unemployment, which has stubbornly hovered above nine percent for months, is widely seen as Obama’s Achilles’ heel going into next year’s election.