Poll: Just 12% happy with Congress

CBS News/NYT Poll

CBS News Poll analysis by the CBS News Polling Unit: Sarah Dutton, Jennifer De Pinto, Fred Backus and Anthony Salvanto

In the midst of a bleak economic landscape and after a bruising battle over the federal budget deficit, approval of Congress now matches its all-time low, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll.

Just 12 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing - the same as the lowest percentage recorded in this poll, reached in October 2008, right before the November elections.

Dissatisfaction with Congress cuts across party lines. Republicans, Democrats, and independents all overwhelmingly disapprove of the job Congress is doing.

Though most Americans disapprove of both parties in Congress, they disapprove of Republicans more. Seventy-two percent of Americans disapprove of the job Republicans in Congress are doing, compared to 63 percent who disapprove of the Democrats in Congress.

Among Democrats, more approve than disapprove of the job Democrats in Congress are doing. That is reversed for Republicans - more of them disapprove than approve of the job members of their own party are doing in Congress. Independents disapprove of both parties in Congress.

In keeping with Congress' dismal review, just 6 percent of registered voters think most members deserve re-election - the lowest percentage ever in CBS News Polls during the past 20 years, and a lower percentage than the 9 percent who thought so right before the 2010 midterms.

CBS News/NYT Poll

Americans are usually more positive when assessing their own representative in Congress.

That's true now, too - 33 percent say their representative deserves re election - but nearly six in 10 registered voters don't think their own representative deserves re-election. That percentage is close to the highest found in CBS News Polls.

More from the CBS News/NYT poll:

Most think U.S. on wrong track as fears about economy grow
Obama's approval rating drops to all-time low
Perry leads pack in Republican presidential race
Read the complete poll (PDF)
The CBS News poll database

Chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer discusses the poll on "The Early Show" below:

John Dickerson's reporters roundtable discusses the implications of the poll and the current state of the GOP presidential race below:

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This poll was conducted among a random sample of 1,452 adults nationwide, interviewed by telephone September 10-15, 2011. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points. The error for subgroups is higher. An oversample of Republicans was also conducted for this poll, for a total of 781 interviews among this group. The results were then weighted in proportion to the average party distributions in previous 2011 CBS News and CBS News/New York Times Polls and in the random sample in this poll. The margin of error for Republicans is plus or minus four percentage points.

[mowthpeece]

It's time to clean house and get rid of the old guard. Corruption is rampant. We need new blood. If it hasn't shown any ethics and honesty in office I'm replacing it. Encumbents are out!

visit www.ronpaul.com and find out why he has so many diehard followers that love him so much!

The vote for the last honest man in congress. RON PAUL 2012.

[involved_indi]

I personally am extremely unhappy with congress. There are 23 democratic senators either retiring or up for election that need to be replaced by 23 independants or Republicans in 2012. There are also 2 republicans (Scott Brown & Olympia Snowe) that need to go too.

[acommoner]

Jobs - US American Jobs will not return to the USA until our Government adopts a policy of Fair Free Trade. That all products and/or services offered for sale/use in the USA market must be produced and/or provided in accordance with all USA; quality, safety, health, environment and wage standards.
Go to: www.manifestry.info > Fair Free Trade

[RecoveringRepubican]

Keep it up Republicans, you are destroying America much faster than we ever could have!

Peace Be Upon You,

Al-Qaeda

[bakulaji]

If anybody believes in such Polls, the obvious is made obvious. Believe you, me.

I have no stomach for such Polls. Media, however, makes most of such trivia.

No kidding.

They invented this gimmick. Sells more advertising space. More targeted readership. More readers, ready, willing and wanting to make their footprints in the sands of time by commenting, yours truly, included.

How does it help?

Please, don't ask me. Nobody but nobody calls me to find out whether I am unhappy with the rising sun, waning moon, rising tides or for that matter, whether the hole in the ozone bothers my nerves and displaces my sensibilities towards Pollsters.

Ah, well. Take good with the bad. Go with the flow. Que sera, sera, sera, whatever will be, will be.

The sky is not falling. I am sure. I just checked it out, while these pagan Voodoo-men, aka Pollsters were busy poll-vaulting.

...and I am Sid [e-mail]

[noloyalisti]

Mortar do you not realize that the richest 400 families have more wealth that the bottom 150 million Americans.

SO WHO IS ROBBING WHO?

To use YOUR words about the enumerated powers: That means, the Federal government can make laws within the powers it has been given, to effect the general welfare. It CANNOT make laws anywhere it wants to provide for the common defense.

[noloyalisti]

Mortar, you MUST be a constitutional attorney! Protecting the general welfare means to make sure that people's basic needs are met. That means good education and jobs, health care and clean air water and food.

When you say all the government cares about is power I would say that YOU ARE THE GOVERNMENT. So maybe you are talking about yourself. The government was set up with checks and balances to avoid tyranny. You cannot say that about private corporations who have seized the government for their own profits. At the expense of the rest of America.

[noloyalisti]

So the enumerated powers ALSO includes providing for the defense. It cannot do whatever it wants therefore to provide for the common defense. So that is also illegal and against the Constitution also.

[noloyalisti]

Mortar keep saying he is following the Constitution but like the rest of the Tea Baggers he is cherry picking what HE thinks is important. That's ridiculous.

For example there is NOTHING about corporations, free-trade or excluding public educations, government job creation and government regulation in it. NOTHING!!!!

[RetiredArmy_Nurse]

I've been off the air for quite a while, but I am so glad to see the Army doctor chewed out Mortarman. He would make mean comments with some of my posts, but I generally ignored them. The Army doctor really does lay out facts and I've seen Mortarman's mean posts against him. With the lack of civility and ignorance in some of these posts, I have to credit the Army doctor for holding his tongue as long as he did.

[elliesamericana]

Hey Army Nurse, thanks for chiming in. You need to come on more often to let folks know that Mortar is full of it and that vets like us will call him on it. BTW, I'm a VFW member what about you? I know in the VFW they tell us we are not supposed to say anything bad about a fellow vet, but there are limits. When one starts telling you that you violated your oath because you support Social Security and are telling lies when you just state facts, he lost that protection. As I have found out at VFW meetings not all vets are created equal. We have some very fine members, but some are dirtbags. Good show for jumping in. Patriotic vets should always lead the way. Respectfully, retired US Army Medical Officer.

[noloyalisti]

Mortar you must be some kind of constitutional scholar or you are clairvoyant to know what the Founding Fathers were thinking.

Sorry the preamble state that the government will protect the general welfare of its people. So they MEANT that when good, necessary programs like Social Security, universals single payer health care (Medicare), etc., etc. etc, were needed, the government would take care of it.

Are you somehow suggesting that the private sector, who ONLY cares about one thing profits should do this? Or are you saying the states should each do their own plan? That my friend would make it much more inefficient and costly to run. Or maybe the states can choose to just let old and sick people die if some nutjob like Perry in TX or Walker in WI is in charge.

[Zann-Zel]

Conversation over.
Larry is real - he isn't hypothetical.

When our president, senators, representatives, governors discuss whether this is "right" or immoral or constitutional or otherwise - they should be surrounded by REAL people. Real people in life or death situations - they need to KNOW that when they pull the plug on this program or that program they aren't just making fricken political points! They are saying whether people Live or Die.