Congress Cares! Right?

Yesterday as I perused the headlines to see what the big Congressional news of the week was, here are some of the headlines I saw:

“Bill Clinton spurs US Senate Democrats on health care” (Really? We have to bring back Bill Clinton to get the Democrats to actually do anything useful?)

“Abortion foe seeks curbs in Senate health bill” (Ah yes, apparently abortion is now the big health care bill issue. We don’t want the government to dictate what procedures we can and cannot get – can we say the ‘death panels’ scare – but NO ABORTIONS ALLOWED!)

“US seeks climate framework, not legal pact: experts” (Because when we want our government or businesses to do something, all we have to do is ‘suggest’ it and they’ll get right on it – HA! Hello people, Windows 7 was not really your idea.)

“House passes historic health care bill, with one GOP vote” (Therefore it’s ‘bipartisan’! Boy am I proud.)

“Opponents say they have votes to block U.S. tourism to Cuba” (Two things, one: of all the things happening in this country, we’re concerned about lifting the ban on tourism to Cuba? But two: why are there so many people blocking the lifting of the ban on tourism to Cuba?! Are we still that concerned about Fidel Castro and Communism? Seriously?? I mean, first of all, if I was the U.S., Cuba would be my pinky finger! Secondly, maybe if we opened up Cuba to tourism, the actual people of Cuba wouldn’t be quite so poor, and they would stop trying to invade Florida.)

Ugh, that was all so uplifting that I had to laugh when I saw this headline: “AP-GfK poll: Country in a funk” http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091110/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_ap_poll

Yes! I am in a funk! Thanks for noticing AP-GfK! The article cites lots of interesting statistics including the fact that only one third of the country approves of how Congress is doing. I’m not surprised, those guys clearly can’t get their act together. Then, I went and looked at the original poll which includes congresses approval rating over time. http://surveys.ap.org/data/GfK/AP-GfK%20Poll%20Final%20November%20Topline%20111009_political.pdf

Ok, so Congress’s approval rating was about 30% in November 2009, but it was 21% in November 2008! Now I’m surprised. You’re telling me that Congress’s approval rating has actually improved by nine percentage points in the last year?! Ok, forget surprised, I’m downright shocked! Or at least I was until I revisited what Congress was doing last year around this time: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2008/index.asp Enter the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 and the Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act. Ah, mystery solved.

In fact, looking back on last year at about this time, between the multitude of bailouts, the Dow Jones diving to under 8,000, and the hundreds of thousands of jobs lost, things were looking pretty bleak. At least now, Congress is doing something to try and help me instead of just throwing money at corporate America. Thanks for at least pretending to care Congress! Things are looking up already!