“Funny, Harry Reid and I both see an Old Age Home.”
Well we can laugh at what Reid said, but in the Senate, as an example, there are seven Senators over the age of 80, and SIX of them are Republicans. And in terms of “service” to the country, they collectively represent 21% of the total years of service in that body.
Fineswine (RAT): 24 years (83)
Grassley: 36 years (83)
Hatch: 40 years (82)
Shelby: 30 years (82)
Inhofe: 21 years (81)
Pat Roberts: 20 years (80)
McLame: 30 years (80)
And if you go one more, it gets worse!
Thad Cochran: 38 years (79) and he probably doesn’t know what time of day it is.
So these eight people represent 25% of the years of service while they are only 8% of the membership.
So we can “cluck” about our “Senate leadership,” but we’re the “geriatric party” in the Senate, not the RATs. Trump has his work cut out for him getting these people out of office, all of them, and trying to figure out how to win over our young people.
Our future leaders are unlikely to come from the Senate anyway. Future leaders are more likely to be drawn from among the 1,000 plus office holders (many younger) most of whom are in the fly-over country.
We do absolutely need Congressional term limits. No more half-cenutry politicians.