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Democratic Washington Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez’s push to confront cognitive decline in Congress is finding rare common ground among liberals and conservatives frustrated with Washington’s aging political class.
“In every job I’ve ever had, there’s a simple expectation,” the congresswoman said in a video posted to X on Monday. “You actually have to be able to do the work. Either you can do it or you can’t. And Congress shouldn’t be any different.”
Gluesenkamp Perez proposed an amendment to the FY27 Legislative Branch Appropriations bill in May that would have required “the Office of Congressional Conduct to develop a standard for what constitutes conduct that does not reflect creditably upon the House, as it relates to a Member of Congress’s ability to perform the duties of office unimpeded by significant irreversible cognitive impairment.” The amendment was ultimately rejected by voice vote.
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The congresswoman maintains that the fight to rein in what she calls the “gerontocracy,” a term meaning rule by the elderly, is not over. Reactions on social media indicate that she may have allies on the other side of the aisle.
“I agree with her, again,” Daniel Miressi, a Republican running to represent Connecticut’s 4th Congressional District, said in response to Gluesenkamp Perez’s video.
“Mandatory cognitive testing to be a politician?” Crémieux, a popular anonymous right-wing X account, wrote. “Extremely based. We should’ve had this sooner.”
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Some on the right lamented that Republicans weren’t focusing on issues like this.
“If only Republicans in swing districts were savvy enough to advocate for issues like this, banning congressional stock trading, etc. instead of screaming ‘stop deporting illegals,’” Breitbart News political editor Bradley Jaye posted in response to Gluesenkamp Perez’s video.
Gluesenkamp Perez has criticized the consequences of an aging political class — particularly lawmakers remaining in office despite cognitive decline — for some time. In 2025, she argued that members who were too old to hold office refusing to retire damaged public confidence in Congress.
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The debate has frequently cited the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, whose health and reported cognitive decline became a source of concern for Democrats before her death in 2023.
Just as her proposal attracted bipartisan support, it invited criticism from both sides of the aisle as well.
“[Majority Democrats] just wants a younger generation of corporate stooges,” Mason Pressler, a school board member and organizer for Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, wrote on X.
Majority Democrats is a center-left Democratic organization that has promoted Gluesenkamp Perez’s effort to make sure elected officials are lucid.
Some prominent conservatives argued that the congresswoman’s proposal doesn’t go far enough.
“Ignore the fact that our entire fiscal future is in jeopardy due to entitlements, crushing future generations, focus on cognitive tests that might get a few geezers out of office,” commentator Richard Hanania, referencing Social Security and Medicare, wrote. “Some fight against ‘gerontocracy.’”
Gluesenkamp Perez made headlines in 2024 when she called on President Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential election, citing concerns over his health and age following his widely panned debate performance in June of that year.
The congresswoman, notably, is not hostile to elderly people serving in Congress generally, only when they are mentally unfit to do so.
“You should have members of Congress who are navigating those questions of health care and the medical conditions older people face,” she said in a 2025 interview. “That makes a stronger body.”
Gluesenkamp Perez’s office did not respond to a request for comment when reached by Fox News Digital on Friday.
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