It hasn’t exactly been a banner year for Washington. The latest Gallup poll asking people’s views of different industry’s found that the federal government comes in at dead last. In fact, more people had positive views of the airline industry (29%), the legal field (35%), banking (30%), even the oil industry (20%) than they did of Washington (17%).

It’s a tough institution to love when you have Democrats controlling the Senate, stopping every single piece of House-passed jobs legislation from seeing the light of day. Sure, it’s frustrating having to deal with such intransigence. But it also provides some (unintentional) comedy. To lighten things up regarding the institution we all love to hate, here’s our annual “Top 10 Dumb Democrat Quotes of the Year”

Honorable Mentions:

• “We’re the country that built the Intercontinental Railroad.” – President Barack Obama
• “You name it, they’re there to diminish it, destroy it.” – Nancy Pelosi describing Republican attempts to reduce the deficit.
• Because of more restrictive voting laws, Republicans “want to literally drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws.” – Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL)
• “I look back in history, in some of the worst governments that we had, you know the first thing they did, go after unions, Hitler didn’t want unions, Stalin didn’t want unions, Mubarak didn’t want unions, these autocrats don’t want independent unions.” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) about Republican attempts to curb union power.

Top Ten:

(10) “We are strong, do you see how strong we are? But we are digging in farther, like the future cars are going to have more mileage and more sustainable stars than on the flag. We are going to make our forefathers like they are our dads and not sad and rolling in the grave because we are going to save our country.” – Occupy Wall Street protester. The best part of all that nonsense was that it was uttered by a Columbia grad student…with a trust fund. Oh, sweet irony.

(9) “And of course I want to express my gratitude to my family; to my mother and father who instilled in me the values that carried me this far.” – Anthony Weiner’s resignation. Something just doesn’t seem right about citing the values instilled in you by your parents at the press conference announcing your resignation from Congress because you tweeted  inappropriate pictures that launched a thousand weiner jokes (to a college student no less). Your parents deserve better.

(8) “The fact is, elections shouldn’t matter as much as they do.” – Nancy Pelosi. Yea, maybe those founding fathers weren’t so smart after all. Maybe a republican form of democracy isn’t the way to go after all. Or perhaps Pelosi is just sour that Republicans took back the House of Representatives in 2010.

(7) “Well the good news is our emissions are way down because of the recession.” – Claire McCaskill (D-MO). Nevermind that millions are out of work, millions more are in low-wage or part-time jobs, that our deficit is growing out of control, and that energy prices are soaring. It’s all good, because didn’t you hear? Emissions are down! It’s a bit like saying, my toe doesn’t hurt anymore because I chopped off my foot!

(6) “This deal is a sugar coated satan sandwich.” – Rep. Cleaver (D-MO). That’s how one Democratic lawmaker described the bipartisan compromise to raise the debt limit. Or as Olivier Knox sarcastically tweeted, perhaps you’d prefer a “Beelzebub Burger with Mephistopheles Mayo and Lucifer Lettuce on a Baal Bun…”

(5) “We have negotiated with terrorists. This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money.” – Rep. Doyle (D-PA); “They have acted like terrorists.” – Vice President Joe Biden. Now that Al-Qaeda frontman Osama bin Laden is dead, Democrats are not setting their sights on…the Tea Party Caucus? Somehow I doubt a balanced budget was in the minds of the hijackers who flew the planes into the Twin Towers and killed thousands of Americans.

(4) “When a woman got raped, blame her because she was wearing a skirt too short, she looked the wrong way or she wasn’t home in time to make the dinner. . . “We’ve gotten by that. But it’s amazing how these Republicans, the right wing of this party – whose philosophy threw us into this God-awful hole we’re in, gave us the tremendous deficit we’ve inherited – that they’re  now using, now attempting to use, the very economic condition they have created to blame the victim – whether it’s organized labor or ordinary middle-class working men and women. It’s bizarre. It’s bizarre.” – Vice President Joe Biden. Using a rape metaphor to describe Republicans who want to reduce the deficit? Stay classy Joe.

(3) “I believe all the choices we have made have been the right ones.” – Barack Obama. The economy continues to falter, the recovery has been one of the slowest on record, Obamacare has actually driven premiums higher, the stimulus was a flop, green energy is a dud, and he took a vacation to Martha’s Vineyard when the markets were crashing. Yea, no mistakes there.

(2) “What we’re trying to do here is save the world from the Republican budget. We’re trying to save life on this planet as we know it today.” – Nancy Pelosi. Yes, Democrats would have you believe that making modest cuts to the federal deficit would literally hasten Armageddon. Somehow I don’t remember that part of Revelation.

(1) “It’s very clear that private-sector jobs have been doing just fine. It’s the public-sector jobs where we’ve lost huge numbers, and that’s what this legislation is all about.” – Harry Reid. Apparently Reid missed the fact that at the time he said this the unemployment rate was at 9.1 percent, almost double the unemployment rate for government workers (4.7%).