Congressional Term Limits

[arewethereyet]

I hesitate to put an upper age limit on anyone.  You can have a person in their 50s with early onset dementia who clearly shouldn't be holding an important government position and you can have someone like RBG who was sharp as a tack right up to the end of her life at 84.  

When you start putting an upper age limit on people you are losing out on people with knowledge and experience that can't be found everywhere.

There's a reason the president can only serve a certain number of terms in office.  I don't see why that type of term limit isn't reasonable in other government positions.

**Speaking of RBG - I am not a fan of the lifelong appointments for SCOTUS.  I'm just saying I think she was still quite capable, regardless of age, to do the job.

Yeah, that makes sense to me.  
Just to clarify, and I'm sorry for being hyper fixated here...
The issue then isn't really with age or term, we could take your example and just replace age with term and it's still true.
The real issue you are bringing up is with cognitive decline.  And that, to me makes sense.
Would you agree that there are probably better ways to address cognitive decline in Congress than with term or age limits?
Would you agree that age will correlate much more strongly with cognitive decline than terms served?

RBG I think is a good counter point to age limits.

I'm not as familiar with the arguments for term limiting SCOTUS at this point.  I've been super fixated on the arguments for Congress.
I am sure there is both a lot of overlap, and quite a few differences to keep in mind when considering term limits for different branches and levels of government.

I don't think there is a way to prevent someone in office from going through cognitive decline.  We really can't govern that.  Any number of things could cause actual or perceived decline.  And many of the causes can't be predicted...it's not all about age.

Term limits make sense to me.  The good ole boy network needs to be broken up a bit.  Some of the long timers are there because of the "we've always done it this way" mentality.  

As for congress...I think a couple of consecutive terms would be enough but I am not opposed to them running again after a period of time.

SCOTUS lifelong terms are part of the "we've always done it this way" mentality.  I think a decade would be a good end time.  That could lend itself to consistency without stagnancy.