Congress is so bad even Pelosi doesn't approve

BLITZER: The anger, this frustration, you feel it every day. The poll numbers. Since the democrats became the majority in the Senate and the House, Congressional approval has gone down since the republicans were in the majority. And now the job approval for Congress is even lower than the job approval for the president of the United States. How do you explain that?

PELOSI: Well, what I like to focus on is the fact that we're 20 points ahead of the republicans in almost every category that you can name in terms of trusting -- trust of the American people in dealing with education and health care, the economy, our national security, even fighting terrorism. We're ahead of them in the polls. So from the standpoint of democrats versus republicans, the American people know the difference.

BLITZER: In the Gallup poll, the last one, only 24 percent of the American public thinks Congress is doing a good job.

PELOSI: Well, to tell you the truth, I don't approve of the way Congress is ending the war in Iraq myself. And that's because of the 60-vote barrier in the United States Senate. But don't mistake, expert that you are -- your audience should not mistake the rating for Congress as the rating for the democrats. We're as high as we've ever been. We're up 53 percent to 30 something for the republicans in terms of favorability of a political party in the Congress.

But the real problem is not her, oh no. Of course it's the Senate;

BLITZER: But you could in the House of Representatives use your power of the purse, the money, just to stop funding the war if you really wanted to.

PELOSI: I wish the speaker had all the power you just described. I certainly could do that. That doesn't bar the minority from bringing up a funding resolution. They have their parliamentary prerogatives, as well.

So what we have done is to send bills that limit the mission, to limit the time there, to redeploy the troops, and last week, I believe, was a turning point in the Congressional debate on Iraq. I think we changed it going in by putting a bill on the president's desk.

Since May until now, we haven't been able to put something on the president's desk.

BLITZER: Because of the Senate. PELOSI: Because of the Senate, the 60 vote. But last week we were really optimistic that the Senate would at least support the readiness of our troops. The Webb resolution, the Webb amendment to the defense bill was a resolution that said the guidelines of the defense department, the same amount of time in the war, you have the same amount of time at home to regroup, to retrain, to recover, to be with your family. When they rejected that ...