WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate has evolved — or devolved, critics contend — into an elder care facility.
Just don’t tell (most) senators.
Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s recent health episodes, coupled with the rapid decline of 90-year-old Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) — she’s now wheeled about the Senate and told by aides how to vote — has reignited the age-old debate over, well, age in today’s increasingly elderly Senate.
While senators’ health ailments are dominating cable shows and social media, the debate has barely penetrated the marble walls of one of the nation’s oldest Senates ever.
That’s by design.
“It is an institution that honors old age. Seniority is everything,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) told Raw Story after voting at the Capitol on Wednesday. “The Senate is also a place where one person on the first day can do some really big things, mostly based on their ability to obstruct, but that's the way it's built. It does reward longevity, and, consequently, you end up with a lot of older members.”
Indeed, the position of Senate president pro tempore — third in line to the presidency — is traditionally reserved for the majority party senator who’s served the longest, continuously. Committee chairpersons are often, if not exclusively, given to a majority party senator with the longest service on a given committee.
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You also end up with a lot of secrets in an already secretive body. There’s a seemingly impenetrable veil of silence at the Capitol when it comes to lawmakers with failing health.
Seemingly, one of the most enduring bipartisan principles in the “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body” seems to be that you let your political friends and foes alike die as they please — even if you find them diminishing right next to you as you consider some of the nation’s most critical decisions and cast consequential votes.
When Senate insiders do talk — staffers, in particular — it’s generally in whispers about the lengths some must go to prop up their aged bosses. And it’s not pretty.
Six years ago — or one term, according to Senate time — in her piece, “An old-school pharmacy hand-delivers drugs to Congress,” Erin Mershon of STAT News reported that Capitol Hill pharmacist Mike Kim fills Alzheimer’s prescriptions for at least one member of Congress.
That terrifyingly tantalizing admission is news to freshmen senators — “That's pretty wild. I'm gonna look that up and read it,” Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) told Raw Story — but it’s simply the ways of Washington to senior senators who seem in on the not-so-secret-secret.
“I actually don't want to comment on that out of respect for colleagues,” Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) told Raw Story after exiting a Senate elevator.
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Others shrug off reports of their congressional colleagues being afflicted with debilitating diseases like Alzheimer’s.
“We're a representative body reflective of the country. There's probably a lot of people in the workforce that are engaged in all kinds of different medications, whether they're for Alzheimer's, mental health, whatever. That doesn't surprise me,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) told Raw Story on Wednesday while walking next to the underground Senate tram.
Capito serves as a part of McConnell’s leadership team. She was in his office Tuesday night for their regular start of the week meeting.
“He was sharp as ever,” Capito said.
How the ravages of age affect the human body is a congressional drama that’s as old as Congress.
In 1846, former President John Quincy Adams suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. Voters didn’t care. The former U.S. senator from Massachusetts overcame its debilitating effects and was then sent back to Washington, only this time as a member of the House.
That’s where, in 1848, Adams collapsed as he rose in his seat on the House floor only to later die in the Speaker’s Room of the Capitol.
More recently, Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC) remained in office until his 100th birthday.
Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) died in office in 2009 at 77.
Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) died in office in 2010 at 92.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) died in office in 2018 at 81.
Such situations can leave millions of constituents without the active representation of a key, duly elected federal lawmaker — or, in the case of those who die in office, no elected representation at all. Governors work to quickly fill their seat, but they don’t consult voters and often tap one of their political allies, some of whom never seem to leave the seat.
These days, the nation’s aged politicians are protected by their aides and most of their colleagues who play senatorially-supportive roles.
But every now and again, a lawmaker breaks Congress’ unofficially-official code of silence.
We saw that rarity this spring when Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) had enough of the congressional veil of silence after his state’s senior stateswoman, Feinstein, told Raw Story, “I’m not announcing anything” — hours after her office had literally announced she wasn’t seeking re-election in 2024.
As Khanna took to social media to call for Feinstein’s resignation, he showed the public what’s common knowledge in Washington: Feinstein stopped making some of her own decisions long ago.
“It’s time for @SenFeinstein to resign. We need to put the country ahead of personal loyalty. While she has had a lifetime of public service, it is obvious she can no longer fulfill her duties,” Khanna wrote. “Not speaking out undermines our credibility as elected representatives of the people.”
Of course, it would be unethical, immoral and idiotic for a doctor to divulge their patient’s diagnosis without consent. Consent, however, is not the problem when Washington physicians go out of their way to politically protect politicians.
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Glowing physical examinations can transform a physician into a politician. Just ask Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX). He catapulted himself into the U.S. House Representatives after garnering headlines while serving as former President Donald Trump’s White House physician. Politicized medicine is a disease all its own, at least according to Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). The Duke-trained ophthalmologist is one of four physicians currently serving in the Senate. He’s openly questioning Dr. Brian Monahan, the attending physician of U.S. Congress, for reporting McConnell’s showing no signs of a seizure or stroke.
“Medicine shouldn't be politicized, and if you're giving advice on, you know, what someone's potential diagnosis is, really, it ought to be based on the facts. And what I can tell you is that having vacant spells of 30 seconds or more where you’re unresponsive, is not a sign or a symptom of a concussion,” Paul told reporters Wednesday.
Bolstered by the Capitol physician’s report, the 81-year-old Senate minority leader brushed aside health questions Wednesday.
“I’m going to finish my term as leader and I’m going to finish my Senate term,” McConnell told the congressional press corps.
To many members of the Senate, everything’s fine, even if many read more into McConnell’s health episodes than the congressional physician reported.
“I think people need to actually read his book to understand the guy had polio and polio’s coming back and he's having some serious pain issues,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) told Raw Story just off the Senate floor. “The first time it happened, he was on the floor at 10 o’clock that night having conversations with us. Sharp as a tack.”
At the start of this Congress, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) challenged McConnell’s leadership position, but, like most all others, he’s backing McConnell now.
Support McConnell continuing as leader?
“Absolutely,” Scott told reporters at the Capitol. “Mine was all about how you manage the Congress.”
As for Feinstein?
“Every time I’ve talked to her she’s been really nice to me,” Scott told Raw Story.
In your five years serving next to Feinstein, ever had a good policy conversation with her?
“No,” Scott said.
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In a building built on seniority, members of both parties have already gamed out what the eventual exits of Feinstein and McConnell — and their combined 70 years in Washington — mean for their respective party’s rank and file.
But those whispers are kept far away from the cameras, secure within the bipartisan veil of silence.
While Feinstein checked out long ago, McConnell, who isn’t up for re-election until 2026, seems bent on staying put for at least the next three-plus years.
His colleagues seem fine with that, because, most argue, Kentuckians decided to give him a seventh six-year term back in 2020 — even if voters nationally overwhelmingly support congressional term limits and age limits. Many frustrated voters even support cognitive tests for older lawmakers — something Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has vocally pushed for lawmakers over the age of 75.
In New Hampshire on Tuesday, Haley even suggested 80-year-old President Joe Biden, if elected for a second term, would die before his term was up in 2029.
"There's no way Joe Biden is going to be 86. We all see it. This is about the fact that — you think it it's bad now? This could get so much more worse," Haley said.
Meanwhile, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump would become the oldest person elected president — 78 in November 2024 — were he to win the White House next year.
As for McConnell, many lawmakers just wish he'd get his eyes checked. Because, even as most senators reject proposals like term limits or mental fitness tests, they say Washington’s broken. They just wish those at the top of Washington’s power pyramid could see the ruins they’ve left in their storied wakes.
“It barely functions at all, as far as I can tell,” Cramer of North Dakota told Raw Story. “I think we should get back to some better guardrails.”
