Fewer Than 1 in 10 Americans Trust Congress

According to a Gallup survey, fewer than 10% of Americans deem the honesty and ethical standards of members of Congress as high or very high, making legislators fall behind car salespeople and only above telemarketers on a list of almost 20 professions, The Washington Times reports.

The poll showed that just 2% of the respondents believed that lawmakers possess “very high” ethical standards and 7% deemed them to have “high” standards, in contrast, 25% of the respondents said that they have “very low” standards.

According to the survey, nurses were at the top of the list, with nearly 8 out of 10 Americans evaluating their standards as high or very high, followed by medical doctors, pharmacists, and high school teachers.

Police officers ranked fifth, with half of the Americans giving them a high or very high rating in terms of ethics.

Telemarketers were the only profession to receive a worse rating, with just 6% rating from each party.

Clergy used to be one of the highest-ranking professions in its ethics ratings. However, a 2002 sex abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic church caused the ratings to drop below 50% over the last decade.

About a third (34%) of Americans say the clergy has high or very high standards, their lowest-ever rating by 2 points.

“Nurses, medical doctors, and pharmacists remain the most ethically revered professions of those measured by Gallup,” the pollsters said. “While each of these fields enjoyed a bump in their ethics ratings in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, they all now have lower scores than they did before the pandemic.”

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