The answer is 12.3. The question is, "What is the latest congressional job approval rating?"

As one Texas Republican noted: "The bubonic plague and head lice have higher approval numbers."

Depending on which polling service you check, this is just about a historic low. Obviously much of it is tied to the inability of Congress to pass a budget and failure to compromise on the issues of taxation and government spending.

Much of the concern comes from the inability of the so-called congressional supercommittee to reach a deal to trim the federal budget. That failure to compromise is now supposed to trigger a new set of budget cuts that are likely to be both unguided by congressional representation and more severe than what had been the purview of the supercommittee.

With that background, Congress will be around next year and already there are three strong candidates from Hawaii looking for a new office in Washington.

The announced retirement of Sen. Daniel K. Akaka creates the opening that Rep. Mazie Hirono and former Rep. Ed Case along with former Gov. Linda Lingle all want to fill.

Hirono issued a statement both sharing her concerns about the failure of the supercommittee, calling it a "disappointment shared by families across Hawaii," and also a fear that the looming new cuts will be too severe.

"We cannot hurt our families and seniors. Our national security depends on a strong military presence in the Pacific," Hirono said, but added the need for a balanced approach that "ends the partisan gridlock and focuses on creating jobs."

That same hope for bipartisan compromise also comes from Lingle.

"The committee’s failure is not the result of a lack of good ideas to solve our federal budget crisis, but rather a lack of leadership," Lingle said in a statement last week.

The former GOP governor says that a good place to start with a budget compromise would be the discarded commission report co-chaired by Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles.

President Barack Obama appointed the commission, but generally walked away from the plan. It called for a total of $4 trillion in deficit reductions by cutting government services, defense and entitlement programs plus raising money by closing tax loopholes.

Lingle sad the national bipartisan policy center advocated a similar plan and she suggested it would be a good place to start.

"There are sensible proposals already available to cut federal spending, raise additional revenues and grow our economy," Lingle said.

How that would play with the GOP’s "No New Taxes" bunch is left unsaid.

Like both Hirono and Lingle, Ed Case comes out against "partisan gridlock." And like Hirono and Lingle, Case also makes the case that "we must run our country’s finances just as we would our personal and business books."

Of course, that is not really the same thing. We may spend a lot but we are not in the "Let’s buy a nuclear aircraft carrier" budget league. Nor does a family float bonds or declare that it can run a deficit.

The aspiring trio really didn’t have a true solution to the federal budget cut, which makes the proposal by Hawaii’s Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, who is not running for the Senate, a bit more attractive.

She is supporting a congressional deficit reduction resolution to cut the $174,000 salary of Congress members. It wouldn’t make much of a dent, but with historic low poll numbers, it is probably the only thing Congress could do to raise its own ratings.

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Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.