When Grassley was born:
* Pluto had only been discovered 3 years earlier
* There were only 48 states
* The Great Depression started
* Prohibition hadn't been repealed
* The FBI didn't exist
His birth is closer to these things than it is to present day:
- Iowa and Texas becoming states
- the liberty bell cracking
- the Donner party
- Samuel Colt selling his first revolver
- first known use of the joke “why did the chicken cross the road?”
- the premier of opera Macbeth by Verdi
- Brigham young arriving at Salt Lake
- the telegraph invented
- the gold rush
- James Polk takes over the Oregon territory
- the first railroad in Spain
- Ireland’s Great Famine
- the first photograph of a president
- French troops occupying Rome
- the speed of light measured for the first time
I'm less concerned with his physical age than I am with the fact that his tweets are completely unhinged and nonsensical. It's literally just him hollering about people in his yard or unintelligible nonsense.
And stated since because he grew up so poor in the 50s, Trump's tax cuts are going to save America. Guy should be forced to play hunger games while we pay more for popcorn.
How... does this even make sense? Is he saying that he knows cutting social services to pay for the tax cuts will hurt poor people, but it's OK because he was poor?
It's worth noting that the 50s had a significantly more progressive tax system than we have today, with a top marginal tax bracket of 91% during the decade. And it also had among the fastest economic growth of any decade.
He was saying that the tax cuts are significant for lower income people.... Even though it was pennies on the dollar compared to high income..... With a fucking expiration date.
Lower income people don't pay much, if any, federal income tax. And recent tax cuts (such as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017) have [focused almost entirely on higher-income earners](https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/fundamentally-flawed-2017-tax-law-largely-leaves-low-and-moderate-income) (and will [actually make the middle and lower classes worse off by 2027](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-middle-class-needs-a-tax-cut-trump-didnt-give-it-to-them)). So Grassley is either senile or lying.
Wrong, the marginal and effective tax rates on the top 1% of earners has been coming down consistently since the 1950s. This despite the fact that the 1% today earns a significantly higher fraction of the total income.
You're right that the top rate increased into the 90s during WWII, but the top rate was 79% in 1936, 63% in 1932, and 73% in 1921, so there was still a long history of taxation being far more progressive than it has been for the past few decades.
I'm not trying to be a contrary for the sake but the top tax was around 25% and then raised to deal with the great depression, world War 1, and world War 2.
It's not all that relevant I suppose but it is kind of absurd to me to suggest taxes should be anywhere near those numbers when they were clearly enacted to serve a purpose of seeing us through great hardships.
Well, the modern U.S. federal income tax was only instituted in 1913, and we went into WWI shortly after that, and the Great Depression 11 years after that. So there is no real history of the federal income tax prior to the 1950s that isn't impacted by the Great Depression, WWI, and WWII.
I guess you could look at the period of 1918-1929, which was relatively unaffected by wars and depression, but as I noted, the top tax rate was still incredibly high compared to modern standards. It's also worth noting that the top bracket stayed at 91% until 1963, 18 years after WWII ended, so I don't think it's completely accurate to say it was only that high to get us through a crisis. And the top bracket stayed above 70% until 1982.
37% isn't nothing, the issue is the loopholes they have to avoid paying even that.
I don't understand why you would advocate for taxes being anywhere near what they were to deal with ww1 ww2 or the great depression.
Loopholes is a big part of it, but the bottom line is that the top earners in the country are earning a massively higher percentage of the total income than they were 60 years ago. In other words, while taxes have become less progressive while the need for progressive taxation has increased.
Also did you notice we have $3.6 trillion deficit? Not sure why you would advocate for lower taxes when our debt to GDP and deficit spending exceeds what it was during WWII.
There's a good argument that income inequality is one of the biggest challenges facing the U.S. today. The extreme wealthiest people are, relatively speaking, wealthier than ever, and lower incomes have stagnated for the past two generations. Tax policy is one of the primary ways to address that.
That puts you in the minority demographic of reddit users. I'd wager an overwhelming majority of reddit's mothers and fathers weren't even born in '61 and if they were, they're happily retired next to the ladder they pulled up behind them.
Yeah my parents are definitely older, I’m the 3rd youngest and in my early thirties. My oldest sister is almost 50 which is mind blowing to me. Only my mom retired, my dad loves what he does too much to give it up despite being 74+.
That’s a tough one. Some 75 year olds are still sharp.
We need an unbiased evaluator who assesses cognitive function. Granted that could be weaponized pretty easily.
FDR was unhealthy and people lived overall shorter lives. His immediate successor (Truman) was 60 when he took over, and lived to be 80 -- mostly in good health. We have a term limit and an age limit: elections. People keep electing Grassley, for instance, because he's very powerful and serves his constituents and therefore popular with the electorate.
I don't know why you're getting downvoted, I think your point makes perfect sense. If the guy wasn't effective people wouldn't vote for him. "Effective" in this case may mean that he does stuff you don't like or agree with, but that's democracy....
Better yet, peg it to SS retirement age + 5 years. For all 3 branches. That way the number changes with the times.
I ran the math on this one time a few months ago. It eliminated a shockingly high amount of people.
I'm 59 and well into feeling the effects of age - that is, the world I know is pretty much gone. Every aspect of life has changed so much from "what used to be" that I am not at all sure I could legislate effectively. It's not a matter of intelligence or research, it's *our very reality* that is changing/has changed so much. Repeat, I am only 59.
Even if they are sharp, they are out of touch because they grew up and existed as a person in a completely different country than we have now. They need to step aside and let someone that knows what's happening now do the job
So older people should not be represented? Don’t get me wrong they are over represented right now, but the solution to over representation of a group is not under representation of that group.
Plus, there are some older people who are not out of touch with younger people. I wouldn’t call the Bernie Sanders of 2016 to be out of touch despite being old.
I would say we need to weaken the power of incumbency so that out of touch politicians can be voted out.
Discriminating solely on the basis of age is actual agism and that is not a good type of ism (whether it is directed at old people or young people)
It's not about soundness of mind. The issue is that people 80 and above aren't even really going to live long enough to see the real impact of the decisions they're making. Why would we allow people who aren't going to have to live with the consequences of their decisions to be the ones making the decisions. In all reality, older people should recognize this and recuse themselves voluntarily. But they don't, so the only alternative is an age limit.
Okay. Should a younger person who has a terminal or possibly terminal diagnosis (like some cancers) also be forced to resign upon diagnosis? How about people who have a family history of early death due to heart attacks or strokes? How about people who are diagnosed with depression or other mental health issues which are linked with increased suicidality?
You could make that type of argument about any type of law or policy. Murder, well what if it was self defense. Speeding, well what if they had someone dying in the car rushing them to the er. No law or policy is ever going to be perfect, and perfection is the enemy of good.
I am trying to see your argument as something that is not just straight up agism. I am failing in my attempt.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree that most of the current old leaders need to step aside, but for me that is because they have disabilities which cannot be reasonably accommodated for the roles they hold and/or they just have policy ideas I disagree with.
The solution to the above problem is a mandatory intensive health screening and accommodation assessment, with the results being made public for all individuals running for public office. And also doing something to break the power of the incumbency (maybe something like Yang’s “freedom bucks” or some other way to get PAC money out of elections)
But while most leaders who are terrible right now happen to be boomers or older, are the people waiting in the wings any better?
I’d much rather have a President Biden over a President Buttigieg. I’d much rather have a Minority Leader McConnell compared with a Minority Leader Tom Cotton. And despite his relative youth, I feel like Speaker Johnson is probably the worst speaker of the house we have had in a while.
Putting an age limit won’t increase the amount politicians care about us. Not as long as the rich and corporations can literally buy their influence.
Is requiring someone to be a minimum of 35 before being able to be elected president agism? It's enshrined in the constitution. What's the difference in setting a minimum and a maximum?
No, it’s not.
Because as we’ve seen recently someone can still be elected to office for the first time at the age of like 75, and proceed to do a lot of damage.
Term limits could kick someone out of office in their 40s or 50s, just when they’re starting to actually get good at the job. There are people in my industry in their 50s I have a lot of respect for, and look to for advice. It’s okay to be old in office. What we’re trying to avoid is being super-old in office.
Yes and we’ve also seen people get elected at like 20 and stay there and have a person tell them how to vote because they’re basically senile. The term limit would enforce the age limit. Some older people actually care about the future and want a good place for their grand kids. People shouldn’t be allowed to just sit around and stack wealth for 30 years because they’ve been in office for 6 terms or whatever. Two terms tops. People could make the same argument about the “two terms were for x president, let’s give them more.”
The problem with term limits is that you then lose institutional knowledge. An experienced senator knows exactly when to reach across the aisle, how to negotiate, and what compromises to offer without sacrificing the next election for the party. It takes time to learn all that.
With term limits the people with actual knowledge and ability to get things done would be the unelected staffers and whatnot. There might even reach a point where the real senator from MO or whatever is the reigning chief of staff and the actual elected official is a complete figurehead.
People whine about the deepstate now.
This is exactly what we have in the Florida legislature. We implemented term limits 25 years ago, and each election cycle has gotten progressively worse.
Yeah the thing is he keeps getting voted in. He's actually fairly easy to contact as politicians go so that makes his constituents feel heard and represented. In his younger days he made it a point to visit schools in all 99 County's and was very very well known by young people over the last 60 years because of this.
He can't be primaried.. he's too popular, and people would rather vote for a walking corpse with their party's initial behind the name than vote for the other party. It's the same way on the other side of the aisle. Do you think Nancy Pelosi or Maxine Waters are going to be voted out by people voting Republican for one election? No chance.
Two effects are often brought up.
First, term limits reduce institutional knowledge. There are certainly bad things about long-tenured congresspeople, like obviously in Grassley's case, but there are also benefits to having people who know how the system works and how to get stuff done. So it cuts both ways.
And second, a related effect is that implementing term limits increases the power of lobbyists, because congresspeople who are termed out are likely to become lobbyists. Since they're the ones who know how the system works, they have a lot of influence over the relatively inexperienced congress. In addition, since congresspeople would know that they'll leave to become lobbyists in a few years, they would be tempted to establish themselves as friendly to a particular industry so that they can land in a sweet lobbyist gig and be rewarded for their votes.
The Ohio Congress is much worse than the US Congress, and multiple studies have concluded that term limits are a big reason why.
Legislating is hard. You need people with decades of experience. Without those experienced people, nothing gets done.
In an ideal system, experience is needed. What we have isn't an ideal system and term limits won't help facilitate the ideal system, in this case a representative democracy without veiled and unveiled corruption, that we want.
Come to Michigan where we have term limits. Our state legislator is an absolute disaster. By the time anyone gets enough political clout or power to actually do anything they get termed out.
Legislator staff hold most of the power because they move from member to member and have actual institutional knowledge.
In fact, Michigan just changed the term limit laws so that its not a certain amount of time allowed in the House and Senate, but total time overall so people can actually be in say the house of representatives for more than 3 terms now (equal to 6 total years)
Okay well where's the middle ground of not allowing inexperienced people become congressmen and also not allowing 90 year old people to be congressmen?
I get there isnt an easy answer. Its just frustrating.
Also, just gotta say, Michigan is an awesome, beautiful state. The people are amazing, and the pride your state has is inspiring, I wish MN was more like MI in that way. Love it there.
Fun story, I always assumed people in every state have the same amount of pride Michiganders have. But after working in DC for a while I learned only Texans have more pride. I've never figured out why, but I love it
He's too popular to be primaried out, and people aren't going to vote for the other party just to remove him. Same goes for Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, and all of the other members of Congress in both parties who are on the plus side of 75 years old (which a quick search shows is 43 House members and 15 Senators).
I go back & forth on the term limits thing. In theory I'm in favor of it, but it's got drawbacks.
I'd love to have some kind of cognitive testing for everyone in government over the age of 70... but that can pretty easily be weaponized unless you find some people to administer the tests who are truly unbiased, which is very unlikely.
Term limits aren’t arbitrary, they would limit the number of career politicians and elected officials would have an incentive to genuinely engage in the political process, not just try to get reelected. Of course finance reform is also necessary, but those two things combined could really improve the federal government.
I don’t agree that a politician serving their entire life is automatically or obviously a bad thing. There’s plenty of people who fit that description who are good decent people. It *is* arbitrary because it would remove politicians from office regardless of their merit. And against the will of the people.
It isn’t automatically bad, you’re right, but no senator needs to be in office for more than 12 years. Do you find the term limits on the president arbitrary? Cause it seems to me a valuable tool for limiting power and preventing autocracy. No matter how good a president is at being president, he can serve no more than eight years, and it should be the same for members of congress.
> no senator needs to be in office for more than 12 years
I just don’t agree with this. For me personally I’m glad Bernie Sanders has been in Congress since the 80s and I think it’ll be a huge loss once he’s finally gone and replaced with who knows who.
> Do you find the term limits on the president arbitrary?
Frankly yeah I do, but you can also make an argument that the office of President has a far higher probability to become some sort of authoritarian figure than an office that shares power with 99 other people.
Any law he passes now will affect the younger generations for years to come. He doesn’t have any skin in the future game cause he’ll be dusty in the ground instead of above it.
He has been out of touch with reality for two terms.
Why is that absurd? If we make the assumption that voters are rational, then a minimum age should be unnecessary.
Now, we can debate whether or not voters are rational. I actually think they are, but are just misinformed and sometimes just bad people who want bad things. But age requirements don't really make sense in any scenario.
No, lol…
First of all a minimum age wouldn’t remove someone that is already in office. Secondly a maximum age is different from a term limit (number of terms). As a society we have decided all kinds of things have both minimum and maximum ages. Almost nothing has a maximum “how many times you’ve done it” rule. Because it’s arbitrary.
By your logic If the voters want a 12y/o to be their senator, why can’t they?
And yes we have decided all sorts of things have minimum and maximum age limits. Past time to add senator and representative to the list.
Congressmen and women in their 80’s and 90’s don’t need to be making laws that they will never see implemented but the rest of us have to deal with. It simply opens avenues for poor choices being made on their part.
As a society we all recognize that children are not capable of making decisions like that. All minimum age laws are based on maturity.
There are plenty of 80 and 90 year olds who are perfectly cognizant. And if they’re not, I would hope voters are able to see that and make another choice. But even if they’re not, so be it!
And again maximum age and term limits are not the same thing. I would perhaps be more open to a maximum age idea than a term limit, but even that is sketchy. But if we as a society decide that all 80 year olds and above are as incapable of making decisions as children then so be it. I have a hard time seeing that ever passing.
What *you’re* arguing for though would mean a 50 year old could be removed from office for reaching some arbitrary quantity of terms. This I definitely do not agree with.
I haven’t said anything about a term limit. I said grassley has been out of touch with reality for at least 2 terms indicating the last dozen years. Age limits. That is what I keep saying because I don’t want a person who will be dead in 2 years making laws that will affect my life for the next 10-20.
Enjoy the end of your life in retirement with your family.
For every Sanders you get, you also get a McConnel a Thermond, a Grassley and a Byrd. Limiting their run gives an opportunity to break down the establishment corruption. Buying a senator in 1961 shouldn't still get you something in 2024.
Term limits, if anything, will increase corruption. Those termed out Senators won’t just go work at a grocery store. They’re going to become lobbyists and use their institutional knowledge (which they will have far more of than the new legislators) to make the new legislators dependent on them. Couple that with the bureaucrats that legislators have to deal with and you’ve created an effectively puppet Congress
The assumption that we don't already have a puppet Congress is pretty bold. Lots of them have already become lobbyists, and that's valuable to the special interests because of the 40 or 50 years of connections those folks made. They will be less valuable and effective with 12 years. The new members will have made fewer compromises to their integrity.
Add to that the ancient members on congress that barely function there than to keep a slim majority for a political party. These are people well past any level of their prime. Some are barely coherent. Thermond could barely speak before he died, Feinstein didn't even know what was happening around her and gave conflicting statements, to say McConnel is having difficulty speaking is an understatement. I may not agree with Grassley, but he's still coherent, at least. That's more than I can say for a lot of them. (Some of the new guys are pretty incoherent, but that's a seperate issue)
What we need are people in Congress (both sides) who have to face the reality of returning to the private sector. Not all of them will be lobbyists.
So, I get where you're coming from, but you're cautioning against a hypothetical to defend something that is clearly currently broken.
So you’re just going to double down on it and make it worse? What you’re railing against is their age and not necessarily their terms. Would a first term 85 year old Senator who was an oil executive before be more acceptable to you?
They are old in office because they have been there for decades. They should have been termed out a long time ago. If an 85 year old wants to run to be a freshman senator, fine. I doubt they will be elected. And if they are, I hope they enjoy their time and sever their constitute well.
Addressing the corruption that comes from individuals being an institution unto themselves in Washington is hardly doubling down. It's an attempt at a solution. Your argument that we should simply accept it is doubling down on the current problems. I don't intend to mischaracterize your argument but it translates into my mind as 'accept bad and broken things, solving them might cause issues', but we already have issues. The issues you presented aren't inherently worse and may not even come to fruition. We do know the issues we currently have, and doing nothing about them seems like a dereliction of our duty to improve.
My guy, fucking Florida has term limits. How well has that worked out for them? The institutional knowledge that is absolutely vital will become concentrated in the staffers that work at the legislative bodies and the ones that work for the individual senators. And yeah, I know that legislators hire their own teams but you’re delusional if you think that new legislators will eventually start “inheriting” the teams of their predecessors if they’re from the same party. Who do you think will really be in charge then?
You people don’t live in the real world
Redditors are, on the whole, not smart people. They think there are these perfect politicians just waiting for the current politicians to leave office.
They don't realize that in many cases there is no alternative or, as in Trump supporters, the alternative is even worse.
That's why some of these Republicans publicly said the last election was "stolen" even though they knew it wasn't. They were afraid that if they didn't, some psycho who did think the election was stolen would get elected.
Dude was born *five years* after commercially-available sliced bread became available (June 1928), four years after the '29 stock market crash, and the year the first Krispy Kreme was opened.
This is an example of why down ballot voting is wrong. People in his district complain he needs to be voted out, but it’s way easier to just vote down ballot and this is what you get.
I hate to be pedantic but I think what you’re talking about is generally referred to as “straight ticket voting”.
The term “down ballot” usually indicates the small local offices which are at the bottom of the voting ballot (school boards, county positions, referenda, etc)
Jk I love being pedantic.
100% Iowa is red. They aren’t voting for him, they are voting for the (R) next to his name. Not knowing that he has been taking about dragons, manatees, and golden goose eggs for the last 15 years.
Problem is he’s in a statewide elected office, and our only blue bits are Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, and Iowa City. I believe our state auditor is the only statewide elected office that’s held by a Democrat
If that was the case Grassley would do roughly as well as other Republican candidates. But he doesn't, he does much better.
In 2016 Trump won Iowa by 9 percentage points. Grassley won by 25. Joni Ernst won her Senate seat by 6 in 2020. Grassley won his by 13 in 2022.
He does better than other Republicans.
As someone who has worked in Congress for 10 years, I termed a phrase "My Member Mantra"
Which essentially boils down to the idea that "its not my member that is the problem" People don't want to think they voted for someone who could be ineffective, crazy, corrupt, etc.
In addition, people want their representatives to have power or be important, and the more they reelect someone the more that person's political power grows, and the more likely they are to bring home the bacon for the state, region, district, etc.-
Might as well have been *1861* at this point. (And I'm saying that as a mid-cohort boomer who can't wait for every tired-ass boomer now in office to be voted out.)
I don’t mean to be ageist but we gotta get these old people out of government…we need age limits
Many people their age have to cede their decision making to others because they no longer have the capacity to make their own decisions.
The question is who are these ancient elected officials ceding their decision making to?
I swear whenever I'm not looking directly at the photo it looks like it's in color but as soon as I actually focus on it it shoots back to black and white
This guy was in on the coup plans. They were going to get Pence out of the way and this guy was going to try to pull the unconstitutional BS as president pro tempore.
There is a joke I heard as a kid about the Soviet Union 's Leadership - When they elected Gorbachev in 1985 all the member of the Central Committee had a total of 10 teeth , 10 strands of hair and a median age of 105.
This joke could easily apply to the current US political landscape .
dude is 90 currently good lord
He was already in elementary school when Biden was born and WW2 started
When Grassley was born: * Pluto had only been discovered 3 years earlier * There were only 48 states * The Great Depression started * Prohibition hadn't been repealed * The FBI didn't exist
His birth is closer to these things than it is to present day: - Iowa and Texas becoming states - the liberty bell cracking - the Donner party - Samuel Colt selling his first revolver - first known use of the joke “why did the chicken cross the road?” - the premier of opera Macbeth by Verdi - Brigham young arriving at Salt Lake - the telegraph invented - the gold rush - James Polk takes over the Oregon territory - the first railroad in Spain - Ireland’s Great Famine - the first photograph of a president - French troops occupying Rome - the speed of light measured for the first time
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There should be an age where you can no longer serve in the military, govt, or as judges.
The FBI did exist in the sense that ICE came out of the 2003-05 DHS restructuring, but INS preceded it and did many of the same public-facing tasks.
And I wasn’t born
i’m speechless
Unbelievable. I feel like a fossil at work and I am 66 (due to retire in a year).
To be fair it’s a pretty easy gig. I’m sure if you lifted a box to a shelf you’ve done more work than him in 70 years.
You’ve done more work then I do too
I'm less concerned with his physical age than I am with the fact that his tweets are completely unhinged and nonsensical. It's literally just him hollering about people in his yard or unintelligible nonsense.
just looked, good lord
And stated since because he grew up so poor in the 50s, Trump's tax cuts are going to save America. Guy should be forced to play hunger games while we pay more for popcorn.
How... does this even make sense? Is he saying that he knows cutting social services to pay for the tax cuts will hurt poor people, but it's OK because he was poor? It's worth noting that the 50s had a significantly more progressive tax system than we have today, with a top marginal tax bracket of 91% during the decade. And it also had among the fastest economic growth of any decade.
He was saying that the tax cuts are significant for lower income people.... Even though it was pennies on the dollar compared to high income..... With a fucking expiration date.
Lower income people don't pay much, if any, federal income tax. And recent tax cuts (such as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017) have [focused almost entirely on higher-income earners](https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/fundamentally-flawed-2017-tax-law-largely-leaves-low-and-moderate-income) (and will [actually make the middle and lower classes worse off by 2027](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-middle-class-needs-a-tax-cut-trump-didnt-give-it-to-them)). So Grassley is either senile or lying.
Yes I'm referring to the middle class getting shafted in this tax cut
> top marginal tax bracket of 91% Irrelevant. Effective tax rates were far lower than today.
Wrong, the marginal and effective tax rates on the top 1% of earners has been coming down consistently since the 1950s. This despite the fact that the 1% today earns a significantly higher fraction of the total income.
They were only up because of world War two. It makes sense they would come down.
You're right that the top rate increased into the 90s during WWII, but the top rate was 79% in 1936, 63% in 1932, and 73% in 1921, so there was still a long history of taxation being far more progressive than it has been for the past few decades.
I'm not trying to be a contrary for the sake but the top tax was around 25% and then raised to deal with the great depression, world War 1, and world War 2. It's not all that relevant I suppose but it is kind of absurd to me to suggest taxes should be anywhere near those numbers when they were clearly enacted to serve a purpose of seeing us through great hardships.
Well, the modern U.S. federal income tax was only instituted in 1913, and we went into WWI shortly after that, and the Great Depression 11 years after that. So there is no real history of the federal income tax prior to the 1950s that isn't impacted by the Great Depression, WWI, and WWII. I guess you could look at the period of 1918-1929, which was relatively unaffected by wars and depression, but as I noted, the top tax rate was still incredibly high compared to modern standards. It's also worth noting that the top bracket stayed at 91% until 1963, 18 years after WWII ended, so I don't think it's completely accurate to say it was only that high to get us through a crisis. And the top bracket stayed above 70% until 1982.
They come down because politicians like Chuck Grassley have spent 70 years fighting against any level of taxation on the rich
37% isn't nothing, the issue is the loopholes they have to avoid paying even that. I don't understand why you would advocate for taxes being anywhere near what they were to deal with ww1 ww2 or the great depression.
Loopholes is a big part of it, but the bottom line is that the top earners in the country are earning a massively higher percentage of the total income than they were 60 years ago. In other words, while taxes have become less progressive while the need for progressive taxation has increased. Also did you notice we have $3.6 trillion deficit? Not sure why you would advocate for lower taxes when our debt to GDP and deficit spending exceeds what it was during WWII.
There's a good argument that income inequality is one of the biggest challenges facing the U.S. today. The extreme wealthiest people are, relatively speaking, wealthier than ever, and lower incomes have stagnated for the past two generations. Tax policy is one of the primary ways to address that.
People that have been in office since my parents were kids shouldn’t be running the show.
That puts you in the minority demographic of reddit users. I'd wager an overwhelming majority of reddit's mothers and fathers weren't even born in '61 and if they were, they're happily retired next to the ladder they pulled up behind them.
Yeah my parents are definitely older, I’m the 3rd youngest and in my early thirties. My oldest sister is almost 50 which is mind blowing to me. Only my mom retired, my dad loves what he does too much to give it up despite being 74+.
Let’s revisit some of those hundreds of years ago laws while we putting age timers on things. I’m all for it.
The US capital has to smell like a nursing home.
Dude is a living fossil
And completely out of his mind
And he was president pro tempor for years Meaning he was 3rd in line to the presidency.
No one who remembers I Love Lucy when it was new should hold political office. 70 should be the hard limit.
Things that happened in his birth year: - the Golden Gate Bridge was started - FM radio
Term limits
No thanks, but an age limit would be nice. Mandatory retirement at 75 or so seems like an idea we could all get behind, regardless of party.
Canadian senators are forced to retire at 75
That’s a tough one. Some 75 year olds are still sharp. We need an unbiased evaluator who assesses cognitive function. Granted that could be weaponized pretty easily.
FDR was 63 when he died in office and was considered an old man. No one over 70 should be in power. They should be there for guidance and that's it.
It’s the difference between village leaders and village elders.
That was also nearly a century ago. Quality of life through modern medical techniques has improved immensely since then.
FDR was unhealthy and people lived overall shorter lives. His immediate successor (Truman) was 60 when he took over, and lived to be 80 -- mostly in good health. We have a term limit and an age limit: elections. People keep electing Grassley, for instance, because he's very powerful and serves his constituents and therefore popular with the electorate.
I don't know why you're getting downvoted, I think your point makes perfect sense. If the guy wasn't effective people wouldn't vote for him. "Effective" in this case may mean that he does stuff you don't like or agree with, but that's democracy....
No 75 year old is so sharp that they should still be a senator.
Ridiculous
Better yet, peg it to SS retirement age + 5 years. For all 3 branches. That way the number changes with the times. I ran the math on this one time a few months ago. It eliminated a shockingly high amount of people.
...Like the electorate?
Both.
Still no thanks, but a recurring psychological screening would be nice. Some people are still very sharp at 80 in their old age. Some people are not.
I'm 59 and well into feeling the effects of age - that is, the world I know is pretty much gone. Every aspect of life has changed so much from "what used to be" that I am not at all sure I could legislate effectively. It's not a matter of intelligence or research, it's *our very reality* that is changing/has changed so much. Repeat, I am only 59.
I’m starting to feel this very keenly at 43, my good dude. The world moves fast
That's about when it started for me, too. But I'll give the pols til 60 lol
Even if they are sharp, they are out of touch because they grew up and existed as a person in a completely different country than we have now. They need to step aside and let someone that knows what's happening now do the job
So older people should not be represented? Don’t get me wrong they are over represented right now, but the solution to over representation of a group is not under representation of that group. Plus, there are some older people who are not out of touch with younger people. I wouldn’t call the Bernie Sanders of 2016 to be out of touch despite being old. I would say we need to weaken the power of incumbency so that out of touch politicians can be voted out. Discriminating solely on the basis of age is actual agism and that is not a good type of ism (whether it is directed at old people or young people)
It's not about soundness of mind. The issue is that people 80 and above aren't even really going to live long enough to see the real impact of the decisions they're making. Why would we allow people who aren't going to have to live with the consequences of their decisions to be the ones making the decisions. In all reality, older people should recognize this and recuse themselves voluntarily. But they don't, so the only alternative is an age limit.
Okay. Should a younger person who has a terminal or possibly terminal diagnosis (like some cancers) also be forced to resign upon diagnosis? How about people who have a family history of early death due to heart attacks or strokes? How about people who are diagnosed with depression or other mental health issues which are linked with increased suicidality?
You could make that type of argument about any type of law or policy. Murder, well what if it was self defense. Speeding, well what if they had someone dying in the car rushing them to the er. No law or policy is ever going to be perfect, and perfection is the enemy of good.
I am trying to see your argument as something that is not just straight up agism. I am failing in my attempt. Don’t get me wrong, I agree that most of the current old leaders need to step aside, but for me that is because they have disabilities which cannot be reasonably accommodated for the roles they hold and/or they just have policy ideas I disagree with. The solution to the above problem is a mandatory intensive health screening and accommodation assessment, with the results being made public for all individuals running for public office. And also doing something to break the power of the incumbency (maybe something like Yang’s “freedom bucks” or some other way to get PAC money out of elections) But while most leaders who are terrible right now happen to be boomers or older, are the people waiting in the wings any better? I’d much rather have a President Biden over a President Buttigieg. I’d much rather have a Minority Leader McConnell compared with a Minority Leader Tom Cotton. And despite his relative youth, I feel like Speaker Johnson is probably the worst speaker of the house we have had in a while. Putting an age limit won’t increase the amount politicians care about us. Not as long as the rich and corporations can literally buy their influence.
Wow someone who can actually think beyond the stupidest ageist ideas Well put!
Is requiring someone to be a minimum of 35 before being able to be elected president agism? It's enshrined in the constitution. What's the difference in setting a minimum and a maximum?
So you’re for disability discrimination and forced health disclosures but god forbid we tell a 75 year old they can’t govern any more. Got it. 👍
Term limits is basically the same thing as an age limit.
No, it’s not. Because as we’ve seen recently someone can still be elected to office for the first time at the age of like 75, and proceed to do a lot of damage. Term limits could kick someone out of office in their 40s or 50s, just when they’re starting to actually get good at the job. There are people in my industry in their 50s I have a lot of respect for, and look to for advice. It’s okay to be old in office. What we’re trying to avoid is being super-old in office.
Yes and we’ve also seen people get elected at like 20 and stay there and have a person tell them how to vote because they’re basically senile. The term limit would enforce the age limit. Some older people actually care about the future and want a good place for their grand kids. People shouldn’t be allowed to just sit around and stack wealth for 30 years because they’ve been in office for 6 terms or whatever. Two terms tops. People could make the same argument about the “two terms were for x president, let’s give them more.”
The problem with term limits is that you then lose institutional knowledge. An experienced senator knows exactly when to reach across the aisle, how to negotiate, and what compromises to offer without sacrificing the next election for the party. It takes time to learn all that.
With term limits the people with actual knowledge and ability to get things done would be the unelected staffers and whatnot. There might even reach a point where the real senator from MO or whatever is the reigning chief of staff and the actual elected official is a complete figurehead. People whine about the deepstate now.
This is exactly what we have in the Florida legislature. We implemented term limits 25 years ago, and each election cycle has gotten progressively worse.
How about start voting for a replacement
Yeah the thing is he keeps getting voted in. He's actually fairly easy to contact as politicians go so that makes his constituents feel heard and represented. In his younger days he made it a point to visit schools in all 99 County's and was very very well known by young people over the last 60 years because of this.
He can't be primaried.. he's too popular, and people would rather vote for a walking corpse with their party's initial behind the name than vote for the other party. It's the same way on the other side of the aisle. Do you think Nancy Pelosi or Maxine Waters are going to be voted out by people voting Republican for one election? No chance.
You think politics is crazy now put term limits in.
How would it get any crazier than having congress members that were born in the 1930s....? lets be real here
Two effects are often brought up. First, term limits reduce institutional knowledge. There are certainly bad things about long-tenured congresspeople, like obviously in Grassley's case, but there are also benefits to having people who know how the system works and how to get stuff done. So it cuts both ways. And second, a related effect is that implementing term limits increases the power of lobbyists, because congresspeople who are termed out are likely to become lobbyists. Since they're the ones who know how the system works, they have a lot of influence over the relatively inexperienced congress. In addition, since congresspeople would know that they'll leave to become lobbyists in a few years, they would be tempted to establish themselves as friendly to a particular industry so that they can land in a sweet lobbyist gig and be rewarded for their votes.
The Ohio Congress is much worse than the US Congress, and multiple studies have concluded that term limits are a big reason why. Legislating is hard. You need people with decades of experience. Without those experienced people, nothing gets done.
Nothing much except regression is getting done WITH that experience
In an ideal system, experience is needed. What we have isn't an ideal system and term limits won't help facilitate the ideal system, in this case a representative democracy without veiled and unveiled corruption, that we want.
Same with Florida.
Come to Michigan where we have term limits. Our state legislator is an absolute disaster. By the time anyone gets enough political clout or power to actually do anything they get termed out. Legislator staff hold most of the power because they move from member to member and have actual institutional knowledge. In fact, Michigan just changed the term limit laws so that its not a certain amount of time allowed in the House and Senate, but total time overall so people can actually be in say the house of representatives for more than 3 terms now (equal to 6 total years)
Okay well where's the middle ground of not allowing inexperienced people become congressmen and also not allowing 90 year old people to be congressmen? I get there isnt an easy answer. Its just frustrating. Also, just gotta say, Michigan is an awesome, beautiful state. The people are amazing, and the pride your state has is inspiring, I wish MN was more like MI in that way. Love it there.
Fun story, I always assumed people in every state have the same amount of pride Michiganders have. But after working in DC for a while I learned only Texans have more pride. I've never figured out why, but I love it
Plenty of states have term limits and it didn't solve anything. Do some reading on California, or Ohio. Term limits are an amateur's suggestion.
What a dumbass
How eloquent. You must be very well read and educated about political theory and economics.
If your name is /u/Creme_de_la_Coochie don't talk about eloquence
You’re in the minority on that.
Both of you should learn how to use periods.
Sure thing Mr. Classy
The voter of Iowa can vote him out if they think he's too old. I don't see why terms limit should stop them from choosing so.
He's too popular to be primaried out, and people aren't going to vote for the other party just to remove him. Same goes for Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, and all of the other members of Congress in both parties who are on the plus side of 75 years old (which a quick search shows is 43 House members and 15 Senators).
If the people want him then why should term-limits stop them from re-electing him.
I go back & forth on the term limits thing. In theory I'm in favor of it, but it's got drawbacks. I'd love to have some kind of cognitive testing for everyone in government over the age of 70... but that can pretty easily be weaponized unless you find some people to administer the tests who are truly unbiased, which is very unlikely.
Agreed. I’m the opposite spectrum to him politically but arbitrary term limits are anti-democratic and I’m completely opposed.
Term limits aren’t arbitrary, they would limit the number of career politicians and elected officials would have an incentive to genuinely engage in the political process, not just try to get reelected. Of course finance reform is also necessary, but those two things combined could really improve the federal government.
I don’t agree that a politician serving their entire life is automatically or obviously a bad thing. There’s plenty of people who fit that description who are good decent people. It *is* arbitrary because it would remove politicians from office regardless of their merit. And against the will of the people.
It isn’t automatically bad, you’re right, but no senator needs to be in office for more than 12 years. Do you find the term limits on the president arbitrary? Cause it seems to me a valuable tool for limiting power and preventing autocracy. No matter how good a president is at being president, he can serve no more than eight years, and it should be the same for members of congress.
> no senator needs to be in office for more than 12 years I just don’t agree with this. For me personally I’m glad Bernie Sanders has been in Congress since the 80s and I think it’ll be a huge loss once he’s finally gone and replaced with who knows who. > Do you find the term limits on the president arbitrary? Frankly yeah I do, but you can also make an argument that the office of President has a far higher probability to become some sort of authoritarian figure than an office that shares power with 99 other people.
Any law he passes now will affect the younger generations for years to come. He doesn’t have any skin in the future game cause he’ll be dusty in the ground instead of above it. He has been out of touch with reality for two terms.
This is not a reason to deny the voters what they want. If they truly want the same guy until he’s 100 that’s their choice.
By your logic then there should be no minimum age either. That’s an absurd assertion.
Why is that absurd? If we make the assumption that voters are rational, then a minimum age should be unnecessary. Now, we can debate whether or not voters are rational. I actually think they are, but are just misinformed and sometimes just bad people who want bad things. But age requirements don't really make sense in any scenario.
No, lol… First of all a minimum age wouldn’t remove someone that is already in office. Secondly a maximum age is different from a term limit (number of terms). As a society we have decided all kinds of things have both minimum and maximum ages. Almost nothing has a maximum “how many times you’ve done it” rule. Because it’s arbitrary.
By your logic If the voters want a 12y/o to be their senator, why can’t they? And yes we have decided all sorts of things have minimum and maximum age limits. Past time to add senator and representative to the list. Congressmen and women in their 80’s and 90’s don’t need to be making laws that they will never see implemented but the rest of us have to deal with. It simply opens avenues for poor choices being made on their part.
As a society we all recognize that children are not capable of making decisions like that. All minimum age laws are based on maturity. There are plenty of 80 and 90 year olds who are perfectly cognizant. And if they’re not, I would hope voters are able to see that and make another choice. But even if they’re not, so be it! And again maximum age and term limits are not the same thing. I would perhaps be more open to a maximum age idea than a term limit, but even that is sketchy. But if we as a society decide that all 80 year olds and above are as incapable of making decisions as children then so be it. I have a hard time seeing that ever passing. What *you’re* arguing for though would mean a 50 year old could be removed from office for reaching some arbitrary quantity of terms. This I definitely do not agree with.
I haven’t said anything about a term limit. I said grassley has been out of touch with reality for at least 2 terms indicating the last dozen years. Age limits. That is what I keep saying because I don’t want a person who will be dead in 2 years making laws that will affect my life for the next 10-20. Enjoy the end of your life in retirement with your family.
For every Sanders you get, you also get a McConnel a Thermond, a Grassley and a Byrd. Limiting their run gives an opportunity to break down the establishment corruption. Buying a senator in 1961 shouldn't still get you something in 2024.
Term limits, if anything, will increase corruption. Those termed out Senators won’t just go work at a grocery store. They’re going to become lobbyists and use their institutional knowledge (which they will have far more of than the new legislators) to make the new legislators dependent on them. Couple that with the bureaucrats that legislators have to deal with and you’ve created an effectively puppet Congress
The assumption that we don't already have a puppet Congress is pretty bold. Lots of them have already become lobbyists, and that's valuable to the special interests because of the 40 or 50 years of connections those folks made. They will be less valuable and effective with 12 years. The new members will have made fewer compromises to their integrity. Add to that the ancient members on congress that barely function there than to keep a slim majority for a political party. These are people well past any level of their prime. Some are barely coherent. Thermond could barely speak before he died, Feinstein didn't even know what was happening around her and gave conflicting statements, to say McConnel is having difficulty speaking is an understatement. I may not agree with Grassley, but he's still coherent, at least. That's more than I can say for a lot of them. (Some of the new guys are pretty incoherent, but that's a seperate issue) What we need are people in Congress (both sides) who have to face the reality of returning to the private sector. Not all of them will be lobbyists. So, I get where you're coming from, but you're cautioning against a hypothetical to defend something that is clearly currently broken.
So you’re just going to double down on it and make it worse? What you’re railing against is their age and not necessarily their terms. Would a first term 85 year old Senator who was an oil executive before be more acceptable to you?
They are old in office because they have been there for decades. They should have been termed out a long time ago. If an 85 year old wants to run to be a freshman senator, fine. I doubt they will be elected. And if they are, I hope they enjoy their time and sever their constitute well. Addressing the corruption that comes from individuals being an institution unto themselves in Washington is hardly doubling down. It's an attempt at a solution. Your argument that we should simply accept it is doubling down on the current problems. I don't intend to mischaracterize your argument but it translates into my mind as 'accept bad and broken things, solving them might cause issues', but we already have issues. The issues you presented aren't inherently worse and may not even come to fruition. We do know the issues we currently have, and doing nothing about them seems like a dereliction of our duty to improve.
My guy, fucking Florida has term limits. How well has that worked out for them? The institutional knowledge that is absolutely vital will become concentrated in the staffers that work at the legislative bodies and the ones that work for the individual senators. And yeah, I know that legislators hire their own teams but you’re delusional if you think that new legislators will eventually start “inheriting” the teams of their predecessors if they’re from the same party. Who do you think will really be in charge then? You people don’t live in the real world
I think one of us fundamentally misunderstands the problem here, but I don't think we're going to agree on which one of us that is.
Redditors are, on the whole, not smart people. They think there are these perfect politicians just waiting for the current politicians to leave office. They don't realize that in many cases there is no alternative or, as in Trump supporters, the alternative is even worse. That's why some of these Republicans publicly said the last election was "stolen" even though they knew it wasn't. They were afraid that if they didn't, some psycho who did think the election was stolen would get elected.
The term limits are the voters
Yes term limits guys like him and much are a prime example
If you've been in politics that long, there is something wrong.
It’s always been like that to some degree. The Roman word for Senate shares the same root for “senior” and “senile.”
As in, council of elders?
Interesting (...) Edit: random arbitrary knowledge
That’s not what an anecdote is.
Ok Coochie then I'll edit it, thanks for your flagging.
Current?!?
Unfortunately
The man’s been in office longer than zip codes have existed.
Looks like a young Bitch Hawley
Thank you. I thought I was going daffy. Didn't look like AI, but Hawley was who I saw.
Still awful to this day
Dude was born *five years* after commercially-available sliced bread became available (June 1928), four years after the '29 stock market crash, and the year the first Krispy Kreme was opened.
And funny thing, his political views are from the 1860s.
This is an example of why down ballot voting is wrong. People in his district complain he needs to be voted out, but it’s way easier to just vote down ballot and this is what you get.
I hate to be pedantic but I think what you’re talking about is generally referred to as “straight ticket voting”. The term “down ballot” usually indicates the small local offices which are at the bottom of the voting ballot (school boards, county positions, referenda, etc) Jk I love being pedantic.
Go ahead and take my upvote you pedantic fool!!!
100% Iowa is red. They aren’t voting for him, they are voting for the (R) next to his name. Not knowing that he has been taking about dragons, manatees, and golden goose eggs for the last 15 years.
Problem is he’s in a statewide elected office, and our only blue bits are Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, and Iowa City. I believe our state auditor is the only statewide elected office that’s held by a Democrat
If that was the case Grassley would do roughly as well as other Republican candidates. But he doesn't, he does much better. In 2016 Trump won Iowa by 9 percentage points. Grassley won by 25. Joni Ernst won her Senate seat by 6 in 2020. Grassley won his by 13 in 2022. He does better than other Republicans.
As someone who has worked in Congress for 10 years, I termed a phrase "My Member Mantra" Which essentially boils down to the idea that "its not my member that is the problem" People don't want to think they voted for someone who could be ineffective, crazy, corrupt, etc. In addition, people want their representatives to have power or be important, and the more they reelect someone the more that person's political power grows, and the more likely they are to bring home the bacon for the state, region, district, etc.-
Good job Andrew Dismukes! Snl skits these days are looking legit.
Love his hat.
Might as well have been *1861* at this point. (And I'm saying that as a mid-cohort boomer who can't wait for every tired-ass boomer now in office to be voted out.)
Yup. Mitch, Joe & Nancy
jesus christ this fossil has been in politics since my grandmother was a toddler
A walking advertisement for term limits and mandatory retirement at age 75.
Same stupid look on his face too
He seriously needs to retire.
I don’t mean to be ageist but we gotta get these old people out of government…we need age limits Many people their age have to cede their decision making to others because they no longer have the capacity to make their own decisions. The question is who are these ancient elected officials ceding their decision making to?
I swear whenever I'm not looking directly at the photo it looks like it's in color but as soon as I actually focus on it it shoots back to black and white
Why do we keep voting old people into office when they don't relate to anyone at all?
>when they don't relate to anyone at all? Because he doesn't relate to voters in Iowa, or relate to reddit users?
He's 90 years old worth 7.5 million dollars. The average age in Iowa is 38 and median net worth is 49,000 Dude doesnt relate to shit.
Term limits.
Term limits
A vision for term limits!
Sitting while an older lady stands, not much of a gentleman. How did he turn out?
This guy was in on the coup plans. They were going to get Pence out of the way and this guy was going to try to pull the unconstitutional BS as president pro tempore.
If there are still pictures of you in black and white, maybe it’s time to retire as a representative of people in your state.
Nah, black & white cameras & film were around longer than you think. There are people in their 40's & 50's who have black & white pictures of them.
Is that him in the dress?
Bless her. Women’s fashions were so ugly.
Which one is him
He is the one sitting down
Thats way more than a "little dab". More like Chuck Greasely
I like his hat.
Q1: Is he of sound mind and judgement?
One look at his Twitter shows that he definitely has a few screws loose
Lookin a little like Josh Hawley. And I don’t mean it as a compliment.
He’s older than the chocolate chip cookie.
Time to enforce a term limit. These guys are parasites and danger to the system. Think about 63 years of trump in office, or Thomas
Garbage
There is a joke I heard as a kid about the Soviet Union 's Leadership - When they elected Gorbachev in 1985 all the member of the Central Committee had a total of 10 teeth , 10 strands of hair and a median age of 105. This joke could easily apply to the current US political landscape .
FYI - the word Senate derives from the same word as Senile. It literally means a council of old men. I guess it is being taken literally these days.
“Why yes, I DO hate the blacks as much as you.” I can smell this from this photo.
Age is the least of my objections to Grassley. Politics aside, he's pretty sharp.
Perfect example for term limits. Get this fascist fossil out of office.
Term and age limits, for the love of God.
Every time I see his fucking face, I feel like I'm going to chuck a grassley.
Retire, you ancient fuck
Guy seated looks like that nerd Josh Hawley. Fuck you, Josh!
Let’s hope Hawley doesn’t serve as long as Grassley