Six congresspeople have died from natural causes in office just this term alone. This isn’t a coincidence, this is a sign. This is clear evidence that the people in power are too old, and they must be phased out. The median age of a congressperson is 57-58. Specifically, the median age in the House of Representatives is 57.9, and in the senate it’s 63.9 (www.congress.gov). This means that the median birth year for a congressperson was 1968. If you are a person in Gen Z born in 2008, that means this person was 40 when you were born. And they get to make laws, ban things, and make the rules about technology they barely even understand, all under the guise of “protecting the youth”? These people aren’t making laws for the common good of people, they’re making laws to protect themselves from things they don’t understand, things that scare them, things that could help undermine their authority.
Don’t feel hopeless, there are solutions that you, the reader, can enact on. Two solutions I have thought of and believe others can agree with and have also thought of. First is an age limit to congress. I believe that if we set the congressional age limit to 55, we could get the congresspeople who only vote on things because they fear new things, we could get out the congresspeople who vote when they don’t understand the topic, and we could get out the congresspeople who are too old to even know what’s happening. A second solution that I, and many others, have thought of is congressional term limits. I believe that a 2 term limit for both the Senate and the House of Representatives would leave enough time to make an impact, but it would also not be long enough to influence policies well after your prime. This would be 12 years for the Senate, and 4 years for the House of Representatives. I decided on the 2 term limit for the Senate because it is less urgent to get new people into the senate as it is in the House of Representatives. The reason those in the House of Representatives get less time in office is to adapt to the changing views of a state.
This is not just a piece to inform you of our increasingly aging congress, but it is also a plea. By writing this, I hope that I can reach out to the young leaders of tomorrow. I reach out to you all because you have the potential for serious change. And maybe that change includes restricting the elderly from our government. We can all agree that times were different when these congresspeople were our age, so why are we letting them run our country like it’s those same times? Now is the time of change, and change means letting go of the past. So why do we let those who are stuck in the past lead the future? Some of these people have been in power since the 80s, and they still act like it’s the 80s. We need someone who can make real change happen, not just someone who reinforces the ideas of old. We need people who can fix lives, fix cities, and fix our countries. Not people who act like the needy are greedy. So if you have political ambition, please, fix our congress, make it lively, not at death’s door. Even if you don’t have political ambition, vote for young people. You have as much power as the congress because you decide who gets to be in power. And remember, out with the old, in with the new.
Ronen Cornell – St. Ignatius College Prep – DMSF Class of 2030
Photo Credit: Dre Angerer – Wikimedia Commons