Dec. 27—It is hard to have conversations about aging.
We can talk about how to deal with illness because most people are stubbornly optimistic. We can talk about disabilities because we think those are things that happen to other people. We can place limits on children because we have been 16 and 18 and 21. We know what it’s like, and we know that sometimes we should have been protected from ourselves.
But when it comes to our elders, we are more hesitant to draw lines. We know that, barring sickness or accident, the lines we draw for someone else could limit us sooner than we might expect.
Like drawing up a will or medical power of attorney, it’s an uncomfortable conversation we should have as a country.
We just went through an ugly election season that featured the oldest presidential opponents in history until President Joe Biden bowed out in July. President-elect Donald Trump is the oldest person elected to the office. The campaigns were rife with attacks on both men’s age and mental capacity.
Congress is growing grayer by the day as well. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is 91. He was born the year Prohibition ended and the first “King Kong” movie was released. Rep. Grace Napolitano, D-Calif., is 88. She is as old as the Hoover Dam. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, is 83. He was 3 months old when Pearl Harbor was bombed.
The judicial branch is just as affected. Of the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices, four would qualify for Social Security — five if you count Elena Kagan, who is 64 and could take early retirement if she didn’t want to wait until her birthday in April.
This isn’t a condemnation of the most senior members of our government. It’s not disrespect for what they have to offer. Institutional knowledge is important and needs to be preserved and protected. But people are living longer than they did in 1789. Life expectancy in 1800 was about 40 years old. Today it is just shy of 80.
And it’s growing. According to the National Institutes on Aging, there were 720,000 people over 90 in the U.S. in 1980. The Census Bureau estimates that number will hit 10% of the population — about 33 million — within 25 years.
Many of those people suffer from age-related medical and mental conditions. The Alzheimer’s Association puts the number of Americans over 65 living with that disease at almost 7 million.
Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, is 81. She stepped down from her post chairing the Appropriations Committee in March; she was not running for reelection but had not been seen for months. Last week, it was uncovered that she was living in an assisted-living facility. Her family told the Dallas Morning News she had “dementia issues.”
Granger and her family did the right thing by getting her the support she needed. However, the people of her district in Texas were shortchanged by a lack of representation.
This isn’t new. It happened with Dianne Feinstein before her death in 2023. There have been repeated concerns about Sen. Mitch McConnell, who has had multiple issues with falls and freezing up during appearances. McConnell has not stepped down from his seat representing Kentucky but is withdrawing as Senate majority leader.
The constitution sets minimum ages for seats like the presidency (35), Senate (30) and House (25). We should entertain conversations about maximum ages.
But that seems unlikely. That would require senators in their 60s to vote to give themselves just another term or two in office rather than aspiring to the lengthy tenures of their predecessors. Grassley, for instance, has been in office for more than 43 years.
Lori Falce is the Tribune-Review community engagement editor and an opinion columnist. For more than 30 years, she has covered Pennsylvania politics, Penn State, crime and communities. She joined the Trib in 2018. She can be reached at lfalce@triblive.com.