Nixon’s Approval Ratings After Watergate were up to 4 Times Better than our Current Congress

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It’s no secret that Congress is extremely unpopular these days. They’re so unpopular that they’ve hit an all-time low approval rating of 10% – or even 6% according to Townhall.com. In fact, Richard Nixon was up to four times more popular after Watergate than our 113th Congress is right now. Not content to stop at that, while they’ve tried to pass doomed bills repealing the Affordable Care Act and banning abortion, they’ve also snuck in something else while we weren’t paying attention. Last week, while everyone was talking about Snowden and the NSA, or Paula Deen’s exit from the Food Network, the House Financial Services Committee voted to repeal the section of the Dodd-Frank Act which requires companies to disclose the ratio of pay for their executives versus hourly workers.
Some people will say, “Why is it any of our business what a CEO of a company is paid? That should be between them and the stockholders only.” I might agree, but when so many large corporations are receiving subsidies and demanding more tax breaks, it’s only fair that we should be able to see what those dollars are being used for. If we are being forced to pay as much as $1.6 million per year, per Wal-Mart, to provide food stamps, housing assistance and Medicaid to their employees, while the company makes billions in profits -- then it is absolutely our business how much the CEOs make. If states can mandate the employees of these companies to take drug tests in order to get the assistance their employers aren’t giving them, then why shouldn’t the CEOs at least disclose their compensation? In fact, the argument could be made that these CEOs should be forced to take those same drug tests as well.
When we bailed out the financial sector, only to have the banks we saved make every attempt to not renegotiate mortgages, then we absolutely have every right to know what the CEOs took home. So why has Congress been slowly and quietly working to disassemble Dodd-Frank piece by piece? While it wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, it did create some accountability and transparency that Wall Street is unwilling to live with.
So while we as a public are waiting to see what country gives Snowden asylum or what the next turn of events is in the Paula Deen scandal, Republicans in Congress (with the help of some Wall Street friendly Democrats) are working to undo the good that was done just a few years back, and take us back to the less regulated days before the last economic collapse. As unpopular as they are right now, why are they doing this at the risk of being found out and voted out next year? With our attention diverted, they’re trying to push this through and counting on us not to notice. It’s time to take that disdain for Congress that a vast majority have and use it in a productive manner — find out exactly what your elected officials are and aren’t voting for, and decide if they truly deserve your vote come next year. Because, quite frankly, it’s obvious we need to clean House (and Senate).