House Republicans refuse to tie President Obama to the Waxman-Markey energy bill that is being debated on the House floor today. Recent polling may explain why.

"It's clear it's Speaker Pelosi, Mr. Waxman and Mr. Markey who are driving this train here in Congress," Boehner said this morning. "And so it's theirs -- they're the ones offering it, they're the ones putting it on the floor today, and they're the ones who are out of touch with American families and small businesses."

Why the insistence that it's Pelosi's bill and not Obama's? Well, Obama is far more popular than Pelosi, so Republicans want the bill to be seen as the offspring of a "San Francisco liberal" -- not the gentleman in the White House.

Gallup's daily tracking poll of Obama's job performance found the president with a 61 percent approval rating today, and he's now at 59.7 percent in the RCP Average. He's hovered around 60 percent since mid-May.

By comparison, Congress has a 36 percent RCP Average approval rating, and a Washington Post-ABC News poll released this week found Pelosi with a 38 percent approval rating.

Perhaps the most important of the Post poll's findings was its comparison of who voters trust more on the major issues: Obama or Republicans. On each of the four issues tested -- health care reform, the economy, the federal budget deficit and the threat of terrorism -- at least 55 percent chose Obama over Republicans.