On Saturday, The New York Times posted an article about an amendment to a federal spending bill put forth by Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Democrat of Washington.
The article reports:
Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Democrat of Washington, was sitting through an Appropriations Committee meeting on Tuesday, staring up at the oil paintings of the past chairs of the powerful panel.
One, in particular, she found deeply unsettling.
“It’s concerning to sit there under a large portrait of Kay Granger,” Ms. Perez said, referring to the former Republican congresswoman from Texas who had suffered from mental decline for years when a conservative news outlet in her state found her, at the age of 81, living in an assisted living facility that included a memory care unit while she still held office.
The portrait served as a glaring reminder to Ms. Perez, the 37-year-old auto shop owner and second-term congresswoman who is a co-chair of the center-leaning Blue Dog Coalition, that she has served in Congress alongside aging colleagues, some of whom suffer from mental decline that renders them unable to perform large portions of their jobs.
The article notes:
So last month, Ms. Perez offered an amendment to a federal spending bill that aimed to create basic guidelines in Congress to ensure that members were able to do their jobs “unimpeded by significant irreversible cognitive impairment.”
Her amendment was unanimously rejected, which Ms. Perez chalked up to the fact that it prompted an “uncomfortable conversation” and that Congress does not like to make new rules for itself.
“It’s not a solution that’s been widely discussed,” she conceded.
But Ms. Perez does not plan to drop the issue, which she said is a major concern for voters. In a poll of the 230,000 people who subscribe to her newsletter, more than 90 percent who responded supported the proposal, she said, noting that she represents a district that President Trump won three times.
I have to admit that my first cynical thought upon reading this was ‘which Republicans is she trying to get rid of?’ Mitch McConnell comes to mind in the Senate, but I am not aware of any Republicans in the House that are struggling with cognitive decline. Recently, however, I was aware of a President with that problem.
Our Founding Fathers envisioned a Congress where citizens would come to Washington and serve one or two terms and then go home and live under the laws they passed. It was not meant to be a place inhabited by people who are no longer capable of doing the job required.