No surprise here: Congress’ approval rating is at a historic low. Just 14 percent of people polled by CNN last week approve of the job that Congress is doing. 

But with the national outlook as grim as it is, at least there’s no shortage of material for humorists. Comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have lambasted lawmakers in their usual fashion, and plenty of others are joining in the macabre fun. 

Satirical newspaper The Onion skewered Democrats with the headline, ”Obama: Debt Ceiling Deal Required Tough Concessions By Both Democrats And Democrats Alike,” and poked fun at bleak job prospects with the headline, “Dept. Of Labor Reports It Could Be Nothing, But They May Have Spotted Job In Iowa Strip Mall.”

Urban Dictionary‘s word of the day this Monday is “debt ceiling chicken,” which it defines as being “like regular chicken, but instead of driving cars at each other, politicians are using the economy.”

Al Eisele, an editor-at-large for The Hill, wrote a comedic essay for The Huffington Post excoriating Congress for its reliance on a congressional “super committee” to do the work that Congress as a whole could not get done.

“House and Senate leaders today said they will seek a constitutional amendment to reduce the size of Congress to only 12 members, six from each body,” Eisele wrote. 

He even imagined how Sen. Daniel Inouye might react to such a move:  “I’ve never seen a time when Congress was more dysfunctional than now. Maybe it’s time to say ‘aloha ‘oe.’”

Jim Shea, over at the Hartford Courant, took a look at the “all-American sport” of hating Congress over the decades. He relayed some zingers like this one from legendary satirist Mark Twain: “It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress.”

But the most memorable may have been Shea’s kicker, attributed to Ronald Reagan: “I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.”