WASHINGTON — The last time Americans overwhelmingly approved of Congress, the U.S. had recently gone to war and was still reeling from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Gas prices were $1.31 a gallon and “Fallin’” by Alicia Keys was the top song on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

The year was 2001, and 84% of the public approved of the way Congress was handling its job, the most since Gallup began tracking that metric in 1974. But the glow didn’t last for long.

Approval never reached those heights again, and now the numbers have basically flipped; 86% disapprove as of this April, tying the all-time high. Just 10% are satisfied.

With ratios like that, what’s a lawmaker to do?

“The average member of Congress has almost no agency for altering how Congress as a collective does, so they very much continue to try to win their own reelections,” said Kevin Kosar, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

As Gallup analysts noted last month, “Congress has weathered periods of deep public disapproval before.” After the 2013 government shutdown, for example, it clawed its way from a 9% approval rating back into the teens.

But building public trust is easier said than done, experts warn, and some see a new urgency as the legislative branch cedes power to the executive.

“Congress, particularly over the last 20, 30, 40 years, has not done itself any favors in terms of letting the public know … [it can] compete with the president for power, rather than just sort of follow the party line and support the president under any circumstances,” said Charlie Hunt, an associate professor of political science at Boise State University.

“So I think the public sees that, and then it’s no wonder why they see Congress as this toothless institution.”

Overpromise, underdeliver

Like any type of polling, congressional approval numbers are a snapshot of a moment in time — in this case, a moment in April that saw lawmakers bickering over a partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security and soaring oil prices amid the conflict with Iran.

And they don’t always tell the whole story.

“People use their view of Congress, for better or worse, as sort of an avatar for how they’re feeling about politics generally,” Hunt said.

While low approval can sometimes coincide with wave elections where party control changes hands, it doesn’t necessarily spell trouble for incumbents.

“Collectively, people are upset with Congress, but people tend to like their member of Congress,” said SoRelle Gaynor, an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Virginia.

At the end of the day, the driving force for politicians’ decision-making is a different kind of approval rating — elections.

“That is a public opinion survey with consequences,” Gaynor said.

Still, low approval numbers for the institution shouldn’t be taken lightly, they said, and can signal a gap between expectations and reality. Hunt points to a campaign industry that promises the moon and underdelivers.

The legislative branch can’t always help its do-little image, said John Sides, a professor of political science at Vanderbilt University.

“Congress is in a uniquely challenging position. Getting anything done requires collective action — and collective action often fails. So Congress is often gridlocked and looks ineffectual, especially compared to the president, who can just ‘do’ things,” he said.

But according to Sides, chronically low trust could make that position even tougher, and it’s not hard to imagine Americans becoming increasingly open to unilateral uses of power by the courts or executive branch.

“After all, if Congress won’t or can’t do something, then maybe people just want some other part of government to step in,” he said.

‘Low-hanging fruit’

President Donald Trump has his own job approval woes. While Gallup stopped tracking presidential approval as of this year, its last rating in December put him at 36%, matching Joe Biden’s low from July 2024.

That still beats out Congress, which has risen above that level only a few times in the past two decades.

“We would like to think that Congress would want their numbers to go up,” Hunt said. “We would expect them to try to do popular things, but they keep not doing that. They’re not doing what I would say are easy things, low-hanging fruit, like the stock trading [ban].”

According to Kosar, it may be challenging for Congress to put up numbers near the 40s anytime soon, but it’s not a lost cause. Pushing a broader anti-corruption agenda could help, including banning members of Congress from trading stocks or expelling what Kosar called “particularly repugnant” members. Even if it yielded only a short-term bump, it would counteract long-standing assumptions that Congress is unethical and out of touch, he said.

“The more legislators discuss that they’re doing useful things to clean up corruption in the chamber, to modernize Congress so that it better serves the average American, that sort of language can be helpful,” he said.

Communicating is part of the battle, Gaynor said: “Congress should just talk better about itself.”

But even with an attitude adjustment, Hunt said “something much more fundamental needs to change about Congress.”

“It’s not just ‘pass this one thing.’ They did not get some big bump after passing the One Big Beautiful Bill, or even Obamacare, or the Inflation Reduction Act,” he said. “Those things do not seem to have big impacts. And so I think it has to be a more wholesale kind of cleaning of house, so to speak, that would have to happen.”

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