Punchbowl News reports that the former Senate majority leader, who is retiring after his current term ends in January, lost consciousness at his Washington, D.C., home at 8:36 a.m. on June 14, before a dispatcher sent over an Advanced Life Support ambulance. Journalist Desiree Townsend posted a recording of the call from the emergency dispatcher Tuesday afternoon to X.
I think Congress needs age limits more than term limits.
I disagree. Age limits would disallow competent people who happen to be old from serving (Bernie, for instance). Age does not correlate well to competency, but if you’re young you might believe that. Competency itself can’t be measured well enough by a test to be meaningful, so that is out.
There already is an effective age limit in that people typically run for office the first time when they’re relatively young, and a term limit would kick them out before they got old. Old people running for the first time would likely be seen as out of touch, unless they make compelling arguments (again, see Bernie), and so would not be elected.
Having only an age limit would still allow people decades to entrench themselves and do great damage.
In short, the problem isn’t competency, it’s corruption. If anything, they’re too competent at being corrupt. It’s the same reason we have a term limit for the President, without the limit, we’d have Putin.
Finally, I think there’s a chance term limits could pass, whereas an age limit wouldn’t.
Maybe something along the lines of, if you’re eligible to collect social security, then you’re too old to serve in government.
Dont do that. That just incentivizes getting rid of social security so congress can keep their power till death
If it’s coupled with term limits, mandatory voting, and making running in a primary like jury duty, it might work.
Genuinely curious what you mean about making running in a primary like jury duty?
Similar to the concept of Athenian Democracy where all citizens were expected to report for a lottery and if their names were picked they had to serve.
Worth noting Athenian citizens were only about 10% of the population.
Of them, only maybe 1/6th could actually serve, as military or any other citizens too far away from the Ekklesia were excluded.
Also worth noting the Ekklesia was limited in voting on items presented to them by the Boule, which was basically a smaller council made up entirely of rich folks
Athenian democracy wasnt as democratic as advertised
Right, but with modern technology there wouldn’t be a distance restriction nor am I suggesting we reduce the citizen class to ~10% of the population. The primary similarity would be that citizens would be summoned to serve.