Americans’ approval of Congress hits 10-year low as GOP leadership’s failures accumulate

20 February 2024

Respected pollster Monmouth University's newest survey released Tuesday shows that Americans' approval of Congress is at a historic low as Republican lawmakers continue to fumble major legislative priorities.

The poll, which sampled 902 adults by phone between February 8 and February 12, gauged Americans' approval of both President Joe Biden's administration and Congress' performance. While Biden saw a slight rebound in polling from his own historic low of 34% to 38% in the latest survey, Americans' approval of Congress dipped to just 14%, with 79% disapproving. That's a level not seen since 2013, when Monmouth first started asking respondents how they felt about the legislative branch's ability to effectively govern. 82% of Republicans, 82% of independents, and 74% of Democrats polled all registered their disapproval of Congress.

"One thing that Americans of all partisan stripes seem to agree upon is that Congress is broken," said Patrick Murray, who is the director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute.

The poll was notably conducted in the days following Republicans' killing of a bipartisan legislative package that sought to both supply US allies overseas in order to stave off foreign adversaries like Russia and China, and to fund US border security with an additional $14 billion in appropriations. The bill was initially designed to be a supplemental foreign aid package, though House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) threatened to tank the legislation unless it included fixes for the Southern border.

In order to help the bill pass the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, the Democratic-run US Senate relented and included many items on GOP wish lists for the border, like curtailing asylum policies and allowing for a rapid shutdown of the Southern border if more than 5,000 immigrants crossed it in a single week (there were more than 300,000 crossings in December alone). Sen. James Lankford (R-Oklahoma), considered a hardliner on immigration, was tapped by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) to negotiate the details of the bill on behalf of the GOP, with Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Arizona) working alongside Lankford to include policies palatable for all sides.

However, once former President Donald Trump ripped into the bill on his Truth Social platform and threatened Republicans who supported it, the legislation quickly fell apart before the text was even posted. Senate Republicans who had gone on the record in favor of the bill's provisions ultimately voted against it, despite their claims of an ongoing "crisis" at the Southern border. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) accused Trump of tanking the bill not because he had policy disagreements, but because he wanted to take credit for addressing the border under the assumption that he would win the November election and have Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress.

The bill ultimately reverted back to its original version of a foreign aid package and passed the Senate with more than 20 Republican votes. However, Speaker Johnson gaveled the House of Representatives out for a two-week recess before taking the bill up for a vote. After lawmakers left Washington, Russian forces took the Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, as the Ukrainian army lacked the ammunition to keep defending the city. Zelensky criticized US lawmakers for their lack of action last weekend, saying that "dictators do not go on vacation" at a conference in Munich.

Click here to see the full poll results.

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