As several news outlets have confirmed, Rep. Kay Granger of Texas last recorded a vote in the U.S. House on July 24, 2024.
According to the reports, Granger's family has stated that she has been living in an independent living facility that includes a memory care unit.
While her family denies that Granger resides in the memory care unit, her son, Brandon Granger, told The New York Post that the congresswoman had demonstrated signs of dementia over the past three months.
Rep. Granger's office released a statement:
"As many of my family, friends, and colleagues have known, I have been navigating some unforeseen health challenges over the past year. However, since early September, my health challenges have progressed making frequent travel to Washington both difficult and unpredictable.”
Although she has not cast a vote since late July, Granger, a member of the Republican Party, was recently at the Capitol in November. She was present for the unveiling of her portrait in the hearing room of the House Appropriations Committee, the panel that she chaired until March 2024, when she ceded the position to Rep. Thomas Cole of Oklahoma.
While Granger, who is 81 years of age, had not run for re-election to the House in the most recent election, her district has effectively been without representation since late July.
Most notably, she was absent during the recent spending debate and vote to fund the government.
The lack of transparency on the part of Granger's staff regarding not only the congresswoman's ability to report is a dereliction of duty and a failure to properly serve the people for whom they claim to work. All the while, they have been drawing their salaries and benefits from the United States treasury, hanging on with a firm grip until Granger's "official" retirement.
Anyone who has ever experienced the heartbreaking horror of caring for a loved one with dementia or any cognitive decline -- even at its earliest stages -- understands the difficulties associated with navigating the simplest of tasks, let alone adequately representing hundreds of thousands of constituents in the U.S. House.
Too often of late we have witnessed older members of Congress having, to put it politely, difficulty expressing themselves. That is to say nothing of the countless examples of mental incapacity demonstrated by the chief executive during the last four years.
There is even a long history of the same in the third branch of government, best described in the academic work "Mental Decrepitude on the Supreme Court: The Historical Case for a 28th Amendment" by the scholar and Pulitzer Prize-winning author David J. Garrow.
His article details example after example of Supreme Court justices exhibiting senility, abusing prescription drugs, and other aspects of incapacity that aren't merely amusing anecdotes, but played a decisive role in the decisions of significant cases.
What can be the reaction of an-already cynical American public when it comes to their representatives and staff who will do anything to retain their grip on power for as long as possible?
As John Adams wrote: "It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men to be unfit to be trusted with unlimited power. The passions are all unlimited; nature has left them so; if they could be bounded they would be extinct...If they surrender the guidance for any course of time to any one passion, they may depend upon finding it, in the end, a usurping, domineering, cruel tyrant. They were intended by nature to live together in society, and in this way to restrain one another."
Rather than fodder for jokes and sneers, cases like Granger's should sound alarm bells and remind citizens that structural change and restraint is absolutely necessary.
There is a remedy that will go far in almost completely eliminating these scenarios: Term limits for members of Congress and federal officials.
An Article V convention will discuss and debate sensible and fair proposals to limit the amount of time that individuals are permitted to enjoy the privileges of federal office. It has been obvious for some time that any Congress, regardless of which party holds the majority, will never vote to limit their own power -- and in Washington, time is power.
It is long past time that fixed terms of service be imposed. It is unbecoming of a representative republic that those, like the unfortunate Rep. Granger, who have the advantage of name recognition and lavish campaign funding, are permitted to hide behind a wall of staff after they become unfit or unable to serve.
