CBS News poll: Big majority favor maximum age limits for elected officials

A recent CBS News/YouGov poll found that most Americans agree that elected officials should not be allowed to be older than a certain age. 73 percent of people who answered the survey thought that lawmakers should have to step down when they reach a certain age. Only 27% of those asked said they didn’t like the idea. Seventy-one percent of Democrats, seventy-five percent of Republicans, and seventy-five percent of independents agreed that the age limit should be higher. Also, the majority’s support was the same no matter how old the people who answered were.

40% of those who were asked thought 70 was a good age to retire. Other ages were 50, 60, 80, and 90, and each of those got 8%, 26%, 18%, and 2%. The oldest people in Congress are Senator Dianne Feinstein of California and Representative Chuck Grassley of Iowa. Both are 87 years old. Joe Biden, who is the vice president, is 79 years old. Even though COVID-19’s terrible effects have recently caused Americans’ life expectancy to drop, people are still living longer than in the past. The average retirement age has gone up from 57 in 1991 to 66 today, which shows that people are working longer hours. But can someone be too old to hold some of the most important jobs in the government.

It’s a controversial topic. Many Americans think that age is just a number, and there are a lot of well-known people who are still very active well into their 100s. But more and more people are starting to wonder if someone born during WWII can meet our country’s current needs, especially since cognitive decline in old age is an unsettling fact of life. We looked into the ages of the politicians we’ve elected, researched on their ability to lead, and ways to limit how long they can serve to better understand this complicated debate.

Who are the oldest people who work for the United States?

Even though the number of younger people in Congress has been growing, the generation gap is still very clear: A recent study by the Congressional Research Service found that our national lawmakers are the oldest they have been in 20 years. The average age of a senator is now 64, and while the average age of a member of the House of Representatives is 58, more than half of its voting members were born between 1946 and 1964. This group is called the Baby Boomers. On the other hand, the people at the top of Congress are much older than these averages. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is 82, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is 80, and Senator Chuck Grassley is 88. The oldest senator is Dianne Feinstein of California. She is 89 years old and was born in 1933, which is the same year that the Golden Gate Bridge was built. Also, presidents are being chosen when they are older. President Donald Trump was the oldest person to become president. He was 70 years old when he took office in 2017. But President Joe Biden, who was 78 when he took office in 2021, quickly beat Trump’s record. When he leaves the White House in 2024, Vice President Biden will be 86 years old.