The problem with Congress is that is has a combined age of 8 million plus.

[trumad]

The dinosaurs that inhabit congress, mostly in the Senate, simply need to move on or at least get caught in a mud pit and fade away.

God these critters are old.

[nam78_two]

1. Huh??

:wtf:

Some of our best people are old-Leahy, Levin, Kennedy...
What has age got to do with it? That makes no sense.

[trumad]

3. Donb't know about you but I'm sick of seeing the same old year in year out...

Dem, repub, I don't give a shit.

[The2ndWheel]

7. It's a specialized career

If you(the royal one) want our way of life, you(specifically...just kidding) have to take the good with the bad.

[Hardrada]

2. Problem is there are a lot of Yuppie Reaganite creepos

and slick barely mature snakes who could replace them.

[ComerPerro]

4. I don't understand what you mean by combined age of 8 million plus...

[La Lioness Priyanka]

5. two problems with that : santorum vs kennedy

[neoblues]

6. And a combined IQ of about 80...

Combined, not average. Note: foregoing estimate applies almost exclusively to the Republican half.

[Missy M]

8. I guess you are joking regarding the 8 million plus combined age...

or you do different math than me. I love Senator Kennedy so I hope he is around for a long time but you do have a point. The most ridiculous was Strom Thurmond who near the end had to have someone raise his arm for him to vote. With age comes wisdom, but we do need some new blood in congress. Some of the young republicans scare me as much as the old ones, so that's a problem.

[izzie]

9. Would be nice to get some young guys in there

I am sort of sick to always being ruled by these old WW2 guys. Like Reagan they seem to think a bigger tank will fix every thing. Some new thinking would be great.

[Odin2005]

10. It's only the leadership that is realy really old.

The majority of congresspeople are Boomers, though the leadership is dominated by Silent/Beatnik generation folks like Pelosi and Reid. I read on another forum that 2012 should be the peak of Boomer power in Congress, at which point they will start giving way to a surge of GenXers.

[Skidmore]

11. It has a bigger problem in that it has a combined personal

income larger than the national debt. I don't mind age as much as I mind the classism that the economic policy that has been created by a bunch of very rich people over the past few years.

[ComerPerro]

12. you mean to tell me that each member of congress has an average income/worth

of around 14 billion dollars?

[Book Lover]

13. So experience to you is worth less than ... what? Just youth?

I agree that age can debilitate - Thurmond is the perfect example - but this blanket cry that everyone in Congress is just *too old* and therefore need to be swept away rubs me the wrong way. Plenty of good reasons to vote someone out of their office; many decades of life experience just doesn't seem to be a prudent one.

[Kelly Rupert]

14. Okay, then vote out your old Democrats

and spent six years complaining about the arrogant, brash, crazy Republicans that replace them.

[cali]

15. It doesn't trouble me in the least

that Senator Leahy is 66 or that my new Senator, Bernie Sanders is 65. In fact, I'm thrilled to have them represent me.