COEUR d'ALENE - U.S. Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, is surprised by the difference a year can make.

One year ago, President Obama came to office with sky high approval ratings.

"In my mind I was thinking they needed to get the stone masons out, this is going to be the fifth head on Mount Rushmore," Risch said in a meeting with the Coeur d'Alene Press on Friday.

Now the president's approval ratings have gone down.

A year ago, Republicans had no prospects for picking up Senate seats in the 2010 election. Today, eight Senate seats look like they are going to go to Republican candidates, Risch predicted.

"Right now we don't have enough in play that we could take it (the Senate) over, but it's not out of the question," said Risch, who was elected himself to the Senate in November 2008.

Independent voters are making the difference, he said.

"They (Democrats) know they have a serious, serious problem going into November," he said. "They believed that the change that people were voting for (in 2008) was a change in the country from a center-right country to a center-left country. In fact, the change that people wanted was to get rid of George W. Bush."

Americans "are tired of the takeovers, they're tired of the bailouts, they're tired of the trillion-dollar deficits, and they're tired of the stimuluses," he said.

While Risch believes people are not happy with the direction Democrats are moving the country in Washington, D.C., he also believes people are frustrated with Republicans. The GOP, at times, has been obstructionist, and it hasn't promoted solutions of its own that the public could support, he said.

"Even though people are voting for Republicans, they're still not in love with the Republicans," he said.

On health care, Republicans say Congress needs to scrap the multiple bills put forward, which are not going to work, are difficult to understand, and try to do too much at once, he said. And the health-care reform process needs to slow down.

"It's better to get it done right, than quick," he said.

The components of health care that need reform - such as costs and access - should be tackled in bite-size pieces. The process should be done in a way that ensures it's all understandable, and the consequences of each change are fully understood.

"Republicans don't want the status quo, but the media completely ignores that," he said.

For example, he said, Republicans in Congress want legislation that allows businesses to form insurance pools to reduce costs, and for insurance to be sold across state lines.

"Right now insurance is fully regulated by the states," he said. "There should be a preemption where a company can produce a policy that they can sell in (multiple) states."

States wouldn't fight that type of legislation, he said.

On the nation's economy, he said the consensus inside the Beltway is that a slow recovery is expected in the next 12 to 24 months. It will be slowed because of the depth of the economic downturn.

"It's not like we've had on other recoveries," Risch said.

Spending cuts need to happen across the board, he said.

He said the prediction by the White House and others is for, at best, a reduction to 9 percent unemployment from 10 percent by the end of this year.

There's a limit to what government can do to stimulate or create jobs.

He voted against a recent jobs bill that had multiple positive provisions in it, he said, because Congress didn't find a way to pay for it, without borrowing money. Thirteen Republicans voted for it, including newly elected Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, and it passed 70-28.

"It's going to be very difficult for me to vote for any jobs bill that isn't paid for," he said.

Besides, he said, government doesn't create jobs, the private sector creates jobs. What the private sector wants, he said, is for government to get out of its way.

While health care and the economy have divided the parties lately, Risch, who has a seat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said that's an area where the two parties are united.

"Everybody there is committed to see that Americans don't get killed by terrorists here in the homeland," Risch said.

He said the same bipartisanship is found within the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, another committee he sits on.

"Those two committees effect Idahoans just as much as they effect Californians or people in New York," Risch said. "I went after those committees because I really believe what happens internationally, what happens on those fronts, is important."