Of course our Congressional "leaders" in Washington have always been unpopular. Having a central government is useful--it gives discontent a place to focus.

But the U.S. Congress has never been this unpopular: its approval rating is down to 10%. Only one tenth of voters have either a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in Congress. And this is a bipartisan reaction.

Meanwhile, members of Congress say they are happy with their jobs and feel fulfilled by the work that they do, according to the Huffington Post survey. It must be nice to do nothing, collect a large salary, and have lifetime pension and medical care. Not to mention the public attention.

To me, this is an astonishing situation. We keep voting them into office, but have no confidence that they will accomplish anything, will govern in any way. Probably because past performance shows pretty well what we can expect in the future. Several bills to name post offices, another attempt to kill Medicare, rape and abortion, and a lot of posturing on issues, smoke but no fire.

And if you think 10% is as low as it can go, wait until the economy is threatened to be crashed on purpose as part of the next debt ceiling fight.

Governing would mean for the Congress to take action on things like passing a popular immigration-reform bill, turning off the deliberately harmful sequester, passing a measures to reduce gun violence, creating a jobs bill (instead of killing one), and giving up on creating pointless scandals.

Telling the truth would be a good place to start if Congressmen want to regain public trust.