Iowa's Chuck Grassley at 92: Is Congress Becoming an Assisted-Living Facility?

WASHINGTON — The prolonged absence of powerful U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell, 84, after another hospitalization has revived a familiar Washington joke: the United States Senate is less a legislative chamber than an elite retirement community that can still shake the world. For Iowa voters watching their own senior senator, 92-year-old Chuck Grassley, the question hits close to home: Is America's government becoming a gerontocracy where retirement never comes?

McConnell's latest health scare — which prompted political commentator Laura Loomer to declare him 'brain dead' even before he was loaded onto an ambulance stretcher — has sparked a national conversation about age in public office. The facts