Is It Time To Consider Age Limits For Politicians?

The average age for members of Congress is 58, while the average age of US Senators is 64. On top of that, the top 3 people running for President this year are all over the age of 70. We definitely have an aging ruling class that is out of touch with the rest of the country, so is it time to enact age limits for members of Congress? Farron Cousins addresses this question.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

The average age of a member of the House of Representatives is 58.4 years old. The average age of a United States senator is 64.3 years old. Meanwhile, we have three men, the three front runners for President of the United States who are all over 70-year-old. And the average age of the average American voter is 38 a uh, 38 years old, 38 years old. So the average Congress person is 20 years older than the average American over in the Senate, 26 years older than the average American. And then by God, once she gets to the presidential candidates, 32 years older than the average American. And that leads me to my next question here. This is from hockey fan 1, 2, 4. Who asks, if you could set a maximum age for running for office, what would you consider the age to be? And now that's a weird question. It's, I'm not saying, the question you asked is weird.

The, the emotions that it brings in me is what's weird, because to be honest, I do think we have an aging electorate, or not electorate, excuse me, an aging ruling class that definitely needs to get the hell outta office. But at the same time, I, I don't think we should have age limits. You know, when we look back at that hearing recently with Dr. Anthony Fauci, that dude's in his eighties. Are you gonna tell me that? Because he's in his eighties. What is he like, 84? I think, um, that he's somehow too old to do his job. No, that dude is sharp as a tack. I mean, Bernie Sanders is in his eighties. You listen to him speak, you see his energy. He hasn't lost a step at all. You know, other politicians in their eighties definitely have Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, even Biden to a degree, Donald Trump. Definitely. So just because somebody is older does not mean we should put age limits on there because we do have a problem with the ages of some of these folks. Absolutely. But you solve that not with age limits, but with term limits. 'cause I think capping somebody's age is, is not okay. That is a form of age discrimination, and we shouldn't do that. What we should do is the term limits. Mitch McConnell has been in the United States Senate since I was two years old. I'm 41.

I was two years old when Mitch McConnell went to the Senate. I wasn't much older than that. When Nancy Pelosi went to the House of Representatives, same thing, of course with the late Diane Feinstein. You know, same thing with Joe Biden. Like we've got people who go to Washington DC, they come from either safe districts or safe states where they can keep winning over and over until they choose not to win. That's not okay. We need term

Limits. And I'll tell you one of the people who has actually pushed for this, the hardest is Ted Cruz. It's about the only issue I agree with Ted Cruz on. But we need these term limits. And by the way, not just for the House and Senate, and of course we have 'em for the White House already. We need 'em for the courts. There are judges, and I confirmed this last week doing research for another piece. There are still judges sitting on a bench today that were appointed by Jimmy Carter. There is one judge that is technically on a panel, but is no longer hearing cases or deciding cases, but still technically an active member appointed by Gerald Ford.

No, no, I'm sorry. That's not okay, under no circumstances should anybody be sitting on a federal bench for 45 years. That is insanity, folks. That is insanity. So it's not that we need age limits, it's that we need term limits. Now, I will say it, it does bother me, of course, that the average age of the politicians is so much more than the average age of the voters. We need younger people, we need smarter people. But until we can get that, I think at the very least we should put some term limits in place.