New poll: Almost no one approves of Congress

There is a lot of bad news for both Obama, Democrats and Republicans in a new national New York Times/CBS poll but the bad news is much worse for Republicans and Congress in general.

Americans no longer have any faith in the ability of Congress to do its job.  Only 9% say they approve of the way Congress is handling its job.  That’s the lowest approval rating for Congress since 1990, perhaps ever.

Other results from the new poll are:

• 46% approve of how Obama is handling his job.  An equal percentage disapprove.
• 50% approve of his handling of foreign policy but only 38% approve of his handling of the economy and only 35% approve of his handling of job creation.
• Only 21% of Americans think the country is headed in the right direction.
• 57% cite the jobs (33%) or economy (24%) as the most important problem the country faces today.
• 86% of Americans think the economy is fairly or very bad and only 14% think it will get better.
• Only 10% trust the government in Washington to do what is right, 89% distrust the government, the highest percentage since 1976.
• Only 20% of Americans think Republicans have a clear plan to create jobs and 69% say Republican policies favor the rich.
• In contrast, 38% of Americans think Obama has a clear plan to create jobs and 40% say his policies favor the middle class (23%) or poor (17%).
• 72% of Americans say they have little or no faith that Congressional Republicans and Democrats will be able to come to agreement on job creation.

Read the full results of the poll here: http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/259646/the-new-york-times-cbs-news-poll-oct-2011.pdf