Republican Support For Congress Is The Lowest It's Been All Year

Republicans' approval rating of Congress is lower than it's been at any other point this year. 

Only 16 percent of Republicans say they approve of the job Congress is doing, according to a new poll by Gallup. That's pretty significant because Republicans control the House, the Senate and the White House. 

But GOP support has tanked since February, when an unusually high 50 percent of the party approved of Congress. The high rating likely demonstrates how hopeful Republicans were shortly after Trump's inauguration. 

So what happened? Well, the decline comes as Congress is still struggling to deliver on President Trump's big promises, like health care and tax reform. 

Inter-party differences sank the several Republican-only plans to repeal and replace Obamacare this year. Republicans are now trying to move on to tax reform but have yet to release details about their plan. 

And that topic is also getting bogged down in party politics. House Speaker Paul Ryan recently had to abandon his "border tax" plan to help keep businesses in the U.S. after Republican objections.

On immigration, Trump has mostly acted on his own. But he did throw his weight behind a recent Republican proposal to cut legal immigration 50 percent by 2030.

The Case For Merit-Based Immigration Reform

The Case For Merit-Based Immigration Reform

Groups like FAIR want the U.S. to move away from a system that favors immigrants' family members. That's an incredibly controversial stance.

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But that proposal might not get far: Several Republican lawmakers from states that rely on immigrant labor have opposed the bill. And a recent analysis says it would slow economic growth and result in 4.6 million lost jobs by the year 2040.

GOP support for Trump is still high at around 82 percent, according to Gallup's poll. It seems like Republicans are mostly blaming Congress, not Trump, for the party's legislative troubles.