CNN Poll Says Congress Is Out of Touch

It's a given by now that Congress is out of touch for those of us that have been paying attention. A great many more Americans are discovering that our elected representatives are a bit too beholden to their rich friends and their own pocketbooks. I have no problem with a high salary for Congress as long as it's the American people who are paying the bill but too many members of Congress tend to lose their way when the bills and the bills of their relatives are getting paid by big business and a Republican corps of hundreds of lobbyists.

Here's the CNN poll:

Just weeks before crucial midterm elections, a new poll says nearly three quarters of Americans see Congress as out of touch, much as they did in 1994, the last time the minority party took control of Capitol Hill.

Seventy-four percent of respondents to a new Opinion Research poll say Congress is generally out of touch with average Americans. That's up from 69 percent who agreed with that view in a January poll this year.

In 1994, 75 percent of respondents to a CNN poll also said Congress was out of touch. Voters then proceeded to vote out Democrats in both the House and the Senate, a sweep that hadn't been seen in the House since 1952.

(snip)

Fifty-five percent of respondents said they are dissatisfied with the current opportunities for the next generation to live better than their parents, and 44 percent said they were satisfied.

Respondents also were asked whether "big business" has too much influence over decisions made by the Bush administration.

Seventy-nine percent of those surveyed in the new Opinion Research poll said they feel big business does have too much influence over the administration's decisions. The poll comes after a congressional lobbying scandal and questions about White House ties to the Halliburton Co., a key U.S. contractor in the Iraq war.

I have no problem with big business earning money but I do have a problem with the growing attitude in business that the average American is just nothing but a cash cow to be milked by predatory business practices that allow pollution, jobs being sent overseas, less and less health insurance, innovations that aren't very innovative (look at how many expensive drugs have flopped in the last ten years as one example) and predatory loans just to name a few practices. One per cent of our country shouldn't be owning ninety per cent of the country. The current generation of very right wing Republicans has got to go. But these Republicans won't go unless voters turn out in record numbers and make them go.