initiatives during the first hundred days of the 104th Congress--and ap-
proved of it. Some polls showed that the more that voters became familiar
with the items in the Contract, the less likely they were to vote Republican.
As scholar Clyde Wilcox concluded, these results refuted the argument that
voters delivered a mandate for the Contract in 1994. ²

In 1995, the GOP leadership in the House of Representatives tried to
move forward a number of the policy changes that the party had pledged to
voters in the previous year. Among the pledges in the GOP Contract were
votes on term limits for members of Congress, a balanced-budget amend-
ment, and a requirement that federal employment laws imposed on private
companies also be applied to Congress and its staff. Polls in early 1995
showed that much of the public was pleased that the GOP was acting to
fulfill its campaign pledges. ³ Nonetheless, later polls showed once again
that when people became familiar with the Contract's provisions, they
expressed less support for the GOP-led Congress.

Although the House acted on nine of the ten pledges during the first
hundred days of the 104th Congress, most Contract items stalled in the
Senate. By the end of 1995, the GOP had accomplished little substantive
legislative change, the president and Congress remained stalemated over a
budget impasse that had led to the longest federal government shutdown
ever, and numerous polls revealed that the public had lost patience with the
new GOP leadership in Congress. The public assigned principal blame for
the budget impasse to the Republican-led Congress, not President Clinton.

The public's low regard for the new congressional leadership after just
one session reflected a general skepticism toward the legislative branch and
impatience with the pace of change in Washington. This phenomenon was
nothing new. Indeed, an ABC News poll in 1992 revealed that the public
was disgusted with incumbent politicians, wanted change in Washington,
and by about a 2-1 margin blamed the Republican Party for what was wrong
in the nation. The same poll in 1994 found that the public was still disgusted
with incumbents, demanded change, and by about a 2-1 margin largely
blamed the Democratic party for the nation's ills.
Although there is no evidence that this volatility of public opinion will
end anytime soon, one constant is evident in the polling data: people loathe
Congress. Regardless of partisan control or the direction of policy, the
public strongly registers its disapproval of Congress and its members. A
1993 poll asked respondents to rank the honesty and ethical standards of
people by their professions. U.S. Senators ranked 18 percent favorable, just
2 percentage points better than lawyers and television talk-show hosts and
substantially lower than funeral directors and reporters. ⁴

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