EZRA KLEIN CHIMES IN ON DISMAL CONGRESS APPROVAL RATINGS

Ezra Klein

From Ezra Klein: Congress is ending the year with an approval rating of 11 percent. That's the lowest they've dipped in the 30 years that Gallup has been asking Americans to rate them. And this isn't some one-time drop. As Gallup notes, it's been going on all year: "This earns Congress a 17% yearly average for 2011, the lowest annual congressional approval rating in Gallup history."

That's all the more extraordinary because 2011 hosted a new congress following a wave election. Tired of Democrats, Americans ushered in Republicans. Tired of career politicians, they opted, in many districts, for outsiders. Tired of establishment Republicans, they looked for Tea Party conservatives. Fast forward a year and Americans are tired, historically tired, of this congress, too.

Part of that is the grinding recovery from the financial crisis, of course. But check the headline leading the Washington Post today: "House Republicans intent on killing Senate payroll tax cut deal." That sort of thing isn't helping. And, increasingly, I'm hearing from sources who think the payroll tax really might expire, at least for a month or two. That's really not going to help. That's when the 112th Congress stops being bad at its job and becomes an active impediment to the recovery. That's when it literally begins taking money out of people's paychecks because Republicans refused to extend a tax cut -- a tax cut! -- unless they also got an oil pipeline.

This sort of gridlock is bad for the president, too, of course. 

Obama's job approval, according to Gallup, is 42 percent. That's low. If the Republican strategy is to break Washington so badly that voters want to throw everyone out, they're well on their way. But there are a lot of incumbent Republicans included in that "everyone." Right now, InTrade gives Democrats a 30 percent chance of retaking the House in 2012. If money begins disappearing from paychecks next month, expect that to skyrocket. It will be, for ordinary voters, the most painful in a long list of failures that includes August's debt-ceiling debacle, March's near-government shutdown, and, by November 2012, any number of other items. That's going to be a hard record for majority legislators to get reelected on. 

For a year now, House Republicans, working off their experience in 2010, have legislated as if they have more to fear from conservative primary challenges than from the frustrated, moderate voters who decide many general elections. That strategy has left them the most disliked Congress in the history of polling. If they keep it up for another 11 months, they may well come to learn they were wrong.