Why is it Congress has almost never had an approval rating on the plus side (over 50%)

Yet the members get re-elected by over 90%. Why is that?

And I'm not kidding.

that's it.

I did have David Scott who is about 50/50. I had to move one county over and now my rep is Lynn Westmoreland. The guy seriously sucks ass.

Just a couple wild guesses.

Mark Twain said it then, and not much has changed now.

"Senator: Person who makes laws in Washington when not doing time."

"To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature Congressman."

"I believe the Prince of Darkness could start a branch hell in the District of Columbia (if he has not already done it), and carry it on unimpeached by the Congress of the United States, even though the Constitution were bristling with articles forbidding hells in this country. . . . What a rotten, rotten, and unspeakable nasty concern this nest of departments is, with its brainless battalions of Congressional poor-relation-clerks and their book-keeping, pencil-sharpening strumpets."

"No one's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session."

I think our founding fathers designed Congress to be inefficient and slow so that they would be less reactive and have less opportunity to do harm. Plus keep in mind, it's all about compromise, nothing gets done without compromise. Which is great at times. But by definition, once you compromise and alter a good idea, it no longer can be such a great idea. Lastly, COngress is a big and rather irascible bunch. They don't speak with one voice and it's very hard to figure out exactly what's going on in there, they always seem disorganized.

I think the next step in improving our government will be to bring more visibility into the working of congress. That could come in different forms. C-span is incomplete. It ought to be something like having a "Congress" section in the newspaper, not unlike the sport's section. Something to give the common man an idea of what's being voted for, what's being spent and who voted for what.

Most people want it all their way and they will hold any failure to achieve 100% of what THEY want, 100% of the time, as a failure of Congress (or spouse)

Arrested adolescence and willful ignorance are big problems in America.

the 2006 elections? I don't recall MSM talking about the ratings when the rethugs had control.

Approval ratings are designed to show confidence in leadership. When you've got 535 different people, many of whom are diametrically opposed, it's a tug of war, you aren't going to get the same sense of decisiveness that you get from one person.

Hence, the approval rating of 535 people will almost always be lower than the approval rating of one person.

The rest of them are the problem. They're wasting money on things that don't directly affect me!

in doing so,,,they think they make themselves look good/better. The Pubs made it into an artform...Thats all they do...blame others...and whine....