Out Of Touch Congress

If you  listen to the press you would be lead to believe that Americans are over-wrought about immigration and gun control, however, in a recent poll Gallup found out that was not the case. Once again, the media gets it wrong.

Conservative Tom

By The Numbers: Congress Doesn’t Care What Americans Want, Need Or Believe

April 17, 2013 by Sam Rolley 

PHOTOS.COM

A recent open-ended national poll conducted by Gallup indicates that the average American is less likely to care about issues recently mired in Congressional controversy such as gun control and immigration than the mainstream media and Beltline punditry would have you believe. Instead, Americans want lawmakers to do something about the economy, unemployment and legislative incompetence — issues that bureaucrats are notoriously inept in tackling.

Gallup asked a random sample of 1,005 Americans contacted by telephone the following question: “What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?”

Here are the results:

Economy in general	24 percent
Unemployment/Jobs	18 percent
Dissatisfaction with Government	16 percent
Federal budget deficit/Federal debt	11 percent
Healthcare	6 percent
Ethical/Moral/Family decline	5 percent
Immigration/Illegal aliens	4 percent
Education	4 percent
Guns/Gun control	4 percent
Situation with North Korea	4 percent
Lack of Money	3 percent
Welfare	2 percent
Lack of respect for each other	2 percent
Poverty/Hunger/Homelessness	2 percent
Foreign aid/Focus overseas	2 percent
Taxes	2 percent

Despite media saturation on gun control and immigration in recent months, the polling data indicate that the hierarchy of American concerns has remained relatively unchanged since February. In previous years’ polling data, gun control failed to even register a mention.

Unfortunately, Gallup’s numbers are unsurprising and the general public’s concerns for the Nation are often very different from the legislative agenda of the elected class.

The numbers do, however, indicate good news for Americans pushing to change the status quo in Washington. The only issues mentioned over 10 percent of the time are, incidentally, heavily underscored by advocates for the emergence of a new libertarian-leaning Republican Party. Responsible fiscal policy and smaller government appear to be the main wishes for most Americans as attempts at social engineering — key to the legislative agendas of mainstream Republicans and Democrats alike — continue to fall out of favor with American voters on both sides of the ideological divide.