Like the victim of a slick used car salesman tricked into buying a lemon, Americans wish they could return the Democratic Congress their votes bought: Confidence in Congress has hit an all-time low of 14%.

Gallup just announced its annual survey of public confidence in an array of institutions in American life. Our brave men and women in uniform, naturally, were tops: Confidence in the military is at 69%. Small business, the chief jobs creator in our country, came in second at 59%.

Banks garnered only 41%; the Supreme Court, public schools and the medical system were all in the 30s in the confidence rankings.

President Bush got 25%, down from 33% last year. But TV news, newspapers, the criminal justice system, labor unions, big business, and HMOs all scored lower than our commander in chief.

At rock bottom of the 16 entities polled was the freshly elected, Democratic-controlled Congress. Its dismal 14% confidence rating is the lowest since Gallup began these annual surveys in 1973, and down significantly from the 19% the Republican Congress scored with the public in a "throw the bums out" mood last year.

It really should be no shock:

• Corruption. The Democrats' leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, D-Nev., made $1.1 million in 2001 selling Las Vegas land he didn't own.

In a deal engineered by a former casino lawyer buddy of Reid's linked to bribery and organized crime investigations, Reid skirted Senate ethics rules by failing to report the complex real estate deal.

A 2002 sweetheart deal on 60 acres of Arizona desert involving a Las Vegas lubricants dealer could leave Reid with a cool profit ranging "from $50,000 to $290,000," according to the Los Angeles Times. Reid soon introduced legislation making it harder for oil firms to get out of contracts with lubricant dealers.

Then there is Senate Rules Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein of California, who may have bent a few rules by steering over a billion dollars' worth of defense contracts to companies controlled by her husband.

How about Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., just indicted on bribery charges after the FBI found $90,000 in cash in his freezer? Speaker Nancy Pelosi judged Jefferson unfit to sit on the House Ways and Means panel - then placed him on the Homeland Security Committee instead. Think of the consequences of a terrorist finding someone willing to take a bribe for classified information.

• Retreat. Senate Majority Leader Reid has never missed a chance to declare the Iraq War "lost." Speaker Pelosi has been trying to engineer a pullout for years - even trying in vain to make cut-and-run king John Murtha her House majority leader.

Their latest push for surrender was to write to President Bush that "the escalation has failed to produce the intended results" - even though the new surge strategy under Gen. David Petraeus has not yet been fully implemented.

• Inability to govern. For all the lofty, left-leaning ideals Pelosi talked about during last year's campaign, the House of Representatives has reverted to the same old boys' network it was during the decades of its previous control by Democrats.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell of Michigan - first elected to his seat in 1955 - recently let Pelosi know who's the boss, bucking her on fuel efficiency standards.

The Senate, meanwhile, unable to get much of anything past President Bush's veto, has degenerated into little more than a political attack machine. A meaningless "no confidence" resolution on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales more suited to European parliaments took precedence over things Democrats claim to care about, such as energy policy.

Reid and Pelosi have little to be cheery about. That is, unless Gallup adds some group to its survey - trial lawyers? IRS auditors? repo men? - that might rank lower in popularity than Congress.