April 6, 2022

Please retire, Dianne Feinstein

Did you miss me? Sorry, it was a busy month. But we're back, with more numbers, graphs, and ranting.

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A few weeks back, Nancy Pelosi announced that, at 82 years old, she had decided to spend her golden years…seeking another term. And I kind of lost my shit. Because I don’t care who you are, what your politics are, in your 8th decade, you should be enjoying your family and your ​​$114.7 million net worth.

But it’s not just her. Congress is too damn old. It’s honestly pretty mind blowing how old congress is. Like. The average age of the 117th US Congress? 60.23 years. I’m not saying 60 years old is old in our current day, but that it is too high for the average age of the highest legislature in the country. Especially when you dig deeper into the numbers. I think you see where we’re going here. So let’s begin.

House Ways and Medians

Briefly, if you weren’t paying attention in your civics class and/or have forgotten and/or aren’t from the States: Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government. There are 100 members of the Senate and 435 members of the House of Representatives, all of whom are directly elected. The Vice President, who is indirectly elected through the electoral college, serves as the President of the Senate and can cast a deciding vote if the Senate is split, but I’m not including her in these numbers.¹ The House has 6 non-voting members who I’ve also not included here. So we are looking at the 535 people representing the 332.4 million US residents.²

If you read my previous newsletter “Who Wants to Be a Billionaire,” you might remember me teasing this newsletter when I talked about the conversation between a data set’s mean³ and median. Congress is a perfect example of this. Because the mean age of Congress is 60 years old, but the median is 61. This isn't a huge variation, but it does tell us that Congress skews older, with a few, young outliers pulling the average down.

When you break it out by chamber, it’s clear the Senate skews older, and part of that is certainly due to the age requirements⁴ and the uneven importance of the Senate and the House. The youngest Representative is 26, and the youngest Senator is 35 while the oldest in both chambers is 88.⁵ This makes the average age of the Senate 65, while the average age of the House is only 59.

Let’s look at the distribution, shall we. In fact, let's compare it to the age distribution of the US as reported by the flawed 2020 Census. Congress is our only directly-elected federal body, they represent us. So they ought to, well, represent us, right?

Of course not. Because why would we do a silly thing like that. No, the bell curve of the US population looks nothing like the steady rise of the congressional population’s age. Just look at that. We have 166 congresspeople under the age of 55. 167 between 55-64, and TWO HUNDRED (200) over 65. I’m actually so angry looking at that, that I need to step away for a moment, so marinate on this and I’ll be back in a second.

Okay. I’m back. I just want to say, because some of my favorite readers of this newsletter are over the age of 55, that it’s not that I don’t think they should have representatives their age, looking out for their interests in Congress, etc etc. It’s just that, people over 55 represent 28% of the US population and SIXTY NINE PERCENT of Congress. I can’t even make a joke about 69 here and it’s not because my parents are reading this, it’s because I’m too mad.

Could the Silent Generation please be silent?

This isn’t even a Boomer vs Millennial thing. Because these aren’t Boomers we’re talking about, at least not entirely. If you aren’t familiar with the boundary lines, here’s how the generations born in the 20th century roughly break down.

• 1900-1927: The Greatest Generation⁶

• 1928-1945: The Silent Generation

• 1946-1964: Boomers

• 1965-1980: Gen X

• 1981-1995: Millennials⁷

• 1996-2012: Gen Z

So how does that pan out in Congress? It looks like this.

Yes, there are a lot of Boomers, arguably too many. But jesus there are 37 members of The Silent Generation in Congress right now. There are 37 people, over the age of 77, who are actively deciding to keep working. There are 37 people who are a dozen or more years over the retirement age. 37 people who have lived through 15 presidents.⁸ 37 people who were born in the same decade that the rotary phone WAS INVENTED. Let me take a breath, I’m getting heated again.

It’s also worth noting that the Silent Generation was relatively small compared to the following ones. According to a Pew research study I found, there were about 47 million people born in that generation, while the other generations birthed: 76 million Boomers, 55 million Gen Xers, and 62 million Millennials. But god they are really clinging on to that power, huh?

I just can’t imagine. What’s the endgame for Chuck Grassley and Dianne Feinstein? Don Young, who recently passed away, was the Alaska at-large representative from 1973 to March 2022, nearly 50 years. This man was in Congress when the House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach Nixon, Clinton, and Trump. My parents were in college when this man was first elected to office, and have since had full careers and retired, like rational adults.

I know there are some people who keep working past retirement age because they love their work. And some who do it because they have no choice, financially. But most of these people are millionaires. In fact, every congressperson over 80 is a millionaire.

Everybody to the limit! The Cheat is to the limit!

There are no term limits in Congress. Because you know who has to pass those term limits? Congress. And who’s going to vote for something that will ensure they lose their job? Back in the 90s, there was a movement to create term limits. There were ballot measures passed in 23 states in support of term limits, with some states voting as high as 2 to 1 in favor of limits, but the Supreme Court overruled it, saying the states cannot impose term limits. I guess one of the constitutional reasons is that it technically limits the right of the people to choose their elected representatives. Which is a laugh, considering gerrymandering, Citizens United, and other issues.

So yeah. No term limits. What does that look like? Well, for one thing, 36 members of congress have been in office since the 1995 Supreme Court ruling against term limits. There are 15 congresspeople who have been in office since before I was born and I’m old enough now that if I sleep funny, I feel it for a month afterward. Here’s the breakdown:

Honestly. Imagining working at any job for 49 year, let alone the same job, in the same building, doing the same basic thing, for 5 decades, makes me feel tired. I'm so tired I'm going to go take a rage nap about this. I can't come up with anything else to say. There are a lot of things about our legislature that need work. But as long as it’s dominated by people old enough to remember the WPA, I don’t know how anything changes.