NBC/WSJ poll: 60 percent say fire every member of Congress

NBC/WSJ poll: 60 percent say fire every member of Congress

Throw the bums out.

That’s the message 60 percent of Americans are sending to Washington in a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, saying if they had the chance to vote to defeat and replace every single member of Congress, including their own representative, they would. Just 35 percent say they would not.

The 60 percent figure is the highest-ever in that question recorded in the poll, registered in the wake of the government shutdown and threat of the U.S. defaulting on its debt for the first time in history. If the nation’s debt limit is not increased one week from now, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew warns that the entire global economy could be in peril.

Read the full poll here (.pdf)

The 10 Scariest Doomsday Predictions About a Default - ABC News

The 10 Scariest Doomsday Predictions About a Default - ABC News



"In the event that a debt limit impasse were to lead to a default, it could have a catastrophic effect on not just financial markets but also on job creation, consumer spending and economic growth -- with many private-sector analysts believing that it would lead to events of the magnitude of late 2008 or worse, and the result then was a recession more severe than any seen since the Great Depression," according to a Treasury Department report released last week.

Some members of Congress, mostly Republicans, have quibbled over the date the nation can no longer pay its bills. Still other lawmakers say a default wouldn't be all that bad.

Such lingering doubts notwithstanding, doomsday predictions about the consequences of a default are everywhere these days. ABC News has compiled some of the scariest of the bunch.