Capitol Hill

• It was hard to avoid the fact that it had been three decades since Clinton was in office – yet at 77, he’s somehow three years younger than Biden.
• Biden, now 80 years old, is the first octogenarian to occupy the Oval Office – and his main rival, former President Donald Trump, is 77.
• If he had run and won, he would have been 72 at the 1997 inauguration.

A trend toward older people

• For 140 years, William Henry Harrison held the record as the oldest person ever elected president, until Ronald Reagan came along.
• Harrison was a relatively spry 68 when he took office in 1841, and Reagan was 69 at his first inauguration in 1981.
• When Reagan left office at age 77, he was the oldest person ever to have served as president.

Beyond the White House

• Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley was just reelected and has turned 90, with no plans to retire.
• Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders is 81 and hasn’t mentioned retirement at all.
• In the House, California Democrat and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, at age 83, just announced she’s running for reelection for her 19th full term in office.
• Every one of the 20 oldest members of Congress is at least 80, and this is the third-oldest House and Senate since 1789.

Delayed retirement

• Most baby boomers who delay retirement do so because they can’t afford to stop working, due to inflation or lack of savings.
• But all of these political leaders have plenty of money in the bank – many are millionaires.
• If they retired, they would enjoy government pensions and health care benefits in addition to Medicare.
• It’s easy to see why so few of them want to walk away.

Age limits?

• There have been calls to impose age limits for federal elected office.
• Yet the most stressful job in the world has no upper age limit.
• And having the wisdom to realize that life is short and about more than just going to work.
• We’ve got to get back to electing people in their 50s and early 60s.” And the polling shows that most Americans would say, “Amen, brother.”

Mary Kate Cary does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• Congress needs to look past the surface issues of higher insurance costs and focus on what's driving those increases.
• "Insurance is a mechanism for spreading risk, and it is not insurance that's changed," said Jimi Grande, senior vice president of federal and political affairs for NAMIC.
• "Instead, what we're seeing is the risk and cost of what's being insured going up dramatically.
• Congress needs to look past the surface issues of higher costs and focus on what's driving those increases."

• US president Joe Biden has proposed a new US$105 billion (£86.5 billion) national security aid package, including $61 billion for Ukraine.
• While US support for Ukraine still receives bipartisan backing in the Senate, opposition from Republicans in the House of Representatives has, if anything, hardened.
• The speaker of the house is often considered the second most powerful role in US politics and can make or break the president’s agenda.

Power battles

• Capitol Hill (or, more specifically, house Republicans) have been in the throes of a high-stakes power battle, with Ukraine’s defences hanging in the balance.
• What’s obvious is that any closed-door negotiations over Johnson’s speakership involved constant horsetrading over the issue.
• House majority leader (the “number two man” under McCarthy) Steve Scalise separately voted three times for (and three time against) aiding Ukraine.
• The most recent candidate to drop out before Johnson’s selection, the party’s chief whip, Tom Emmer, had previously voted for financing Ukraine.

Funding under threat

• GOP hardliners wanted to “blow up the system,” and halt the flow of dollars to Kiev.
• Washington couldn’t funnel more dollars to Ukraine, or continue to bloats its deficit, when there was pandemonium.
• Yet Democrats who enabled the chaos simply to make the Republican party look bad also showed their true colours.
• Either way, a long-term funding channel for Ukraine is anything but certain.

Thomas Gift does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• Recent developments in Large Language Models and Generative AI have made the technology more powerful and easier to use.
• Like any emerging advanced technology, effectively buying and using it brings new kinds of benefits and risks and requires reskilling of the acquisition workforce.
• Modern Digital Acquisition: Traditional procurement methods may not be suitable for acquiring AI technologies.
• As AI permeates the federal government, his expertise promises to be invaluable in guiding Congress in making informed decisions for the future.