'World's most prestigious retirement home': Does the US Congress have an age problem?

'World's most prestigious retirement home': Does the US Congress have an age problem?

The current US Congress is the third oldest in history, with senior Senators increasingly holding on to the job for longer. With the recent death of Lindsey Graham and hospitalisation of Mitch McConnell, the debate has revived around an age limit for Congress, which the majority of Americans support.

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Often jokingly referred to as the world's most prestigious retirement home, the average age of US Senators is decades older than the average population.

The median age of voting representatives in the U.S. House is estimated to be 57, while the median age of the current US Senate is 64 - which is roughly the same age as the average retirement age in the country.

Cory Alpert is a PhD researcher at the University of Melbourne and former Biden White House staffer.

"Congress needs to look like the rest of America. And certainly, increasingly, there are more members of Congress from millennial generation, from Gen X, as sort of the passage of time dictates. But no, it's incredibly unhealthy for our democracy that we are largely ruled by people who are not familiar with the technologies of the moment, who are out of touch with the way that life is currently lived."

Out of the 530 voting members in the US House and Senate, 131, nearly a quarter, are 70 or older.

Since 2023, 10 sitting members of Congress have died, all 65 or older, and a number of others have spent weeks and even months off the job in the hospital.

With 84 year old Mitch McConnell currently out of action, Cory Alpert says this leaves elected officials unable to perform their duties.

"If I were a voter in Kentucky right now, where there are huge questions around Mitch McConnell's health, where he is, certainly he's not casting votes in the Senate as they sent him there to do, I would be incredibly frustrated with the fact that the legislator that was voted in to represent my interests is not there because of an entirely predictable health consequence of that age."

Questions have also been raised about the health of President Donald Trump, who at 80 years old is the second oldest US president after Joe Biden.

At a congressional hearing in June, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had a heated exchange with Representative Ted Lieu when shown video footage of Trump falling asleep during important meetings.

TED LIEU: "If Donald Trump cannot stay awake at these important meetings where the cameras are rolling. Imagine what he's like when the cameras are not there. So I'm going to ask you, have you been at classified meetings where Donald Trump has fallen asleep or had trouble staying awake?"

MARCO RUBIO: "I've never been at any meeting where - and the things you're showing me now, he was not falling asleep."

LIEU: "You're lying again. you're lying consistently to Congress."

The age limit, however, is a controversial topic, raising concerns about ageism.

US Studies Centre Research Director Jared Mondschein says that age alone can't determine who is qualified for the job.

"There's a lot of different ways to think about who is qualified for being in Congress and who is not, and there's been, especially when it looked like Joe Biden was going to go against Donald Trump a second time in 2024, a lot of consternation about there not being age limits. But at the end of the day, there's an argument to be made that age limits is basically unconstitutional and undemocratic because it prevents people who are otherwise qualified to run for office."

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi continued the job well into her 70s.

And Cory Alpert says she is widely regarded as one of the most effective House Speakers in US History.

"There's also a tension with age limits because there are incredibly effective members of Congress who are older, and so we're going to have to figure out what a reasonable limit there is."

Still, in recent NPR polling conducted in May, 80 per cent of Americans said they supported age caps in Congress.

And with a record low 25 per cent of Americans reporting satisfaction with the government in 2025, Cory Alpert argues that certain issues demand younger representation.

"But we should have significantly more millennials, potentially even now, given the age range, reaching into Gen Z, to be able to reflect the voting population, and to be able to reflect the fact that they need to legislate into the future, which I think is increasingly important in this age of AI, where laws need to be passed and legislators need to be thinking about a future 10, 15 years down the line, which a member of Congress who's 70 or 80 just simply is not doing."

So why is it hard for younger candidates to break through?

Ahead of the election of former President Barack Obama, who was the 5th youngest US President at age 47, many critics argued he was too young and inexperienced for the job.

Sitting politicians hold a 90 per cent re-election rate, with political parties favouring incumbents and often hesitant to bring in younger people.

Cory Alpert says in the US political institution, age comes with advantage.

"To run for Congress is often quite expensive. You need extensive political and donor networks in order to be successful there. And so, quite often, people who end up running for Congress, they are 40, I think the median age of an incoming freshman member of Congress in this Congress is around 51 because they've had to work their way up through state legislature, through lower tiers, all the way up to build those networks and to build that visibility. And then once they get in office, there's a tenure process, essentially, where the longer that you stay in Congress, the more powerful you are. And so the incentive is for members to stay in Congress for as long as they possibly can to gain more power within that system."

With the rising popularity of younger politicians like Zohran Mamdani in New York and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jared Mondschein says some younger candidates are breaking through.

"You only have to look at the increasing political weight of folks like what they call AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is looking like she very well, if not may run for Senate, could run for president. Or JD Vance, who's still in the early part of his 40s, to be the next president. So I don't think that somehow there's any real limitation to young Americans gaining access to office. I think if anything, we just are looking for the right political candidates to win our attention."

Cory Alpert says that while there are strong barriers such as funding and incumbency, organisations like Run for Something are working to help younger candidates get elected.

"And these organisations are building those networks and that institutional capacity that they can then hand off to younger candidates so that those candidates don't need to spend 30 years. They can jump in at 25 and have networks and have capacity that's built in to help them run. And Run for Something has an incredible success rate. They are getting more young people on the ballot. They are getting more young people elected on the Democratic side, and it's going to take continued effort on that front, on building large networks of donors that then young candidates can access without having to build them themselves over 20 or 30 years."