age of us senator
Congress is decidedly older than the populace it represents: Although Americans may serve in the House beginning at age 25, only 10 percent of House members have been under the age of 40 in recent years. The United States Senate is part of the United States Congress, which is a group of elected people who decide the laws of the country. Every U.S. state elects two people to represent them in the US Senate. These people are called senators. Since there are 50 U.S. states, there are 100 senators. Senators serve six years at a time, and one-third of them are picked every two years. An applicant into the U.S. senate must be a U.S. citizen for nine years prior to applying for the senate. The 9-year rule helps ensure that foreign-born senators show more loyalty to the United States than to their countries of birth. In the record-breaking 111th Congress, for example, Robert Byrd began the term as Senate president pro tempore at the age of 91. When Byrd died, Daniel Inouye, then 85, assumed the office. The 111th Congress, which took office in 2009, was the oldest in U.S. history, with an average age of 57 in the House and 63 in the Senate. In 1797, Congress seated its youngest-ever member, 22-year-old William Charles Cole Claiborne of Tennessee, even though he didn’t meet the constitutional age minimum. In 1869, the average age of members of Congress was just 45, far younger than any Congress of the 20th century. Life expectancy likely had something to do with the 19th-century preponderance of younger men: The average American born in 1900 expected to live only 49 years, compared to more than 78 today. In order to be a senator, a person has to be 30 years old or older, and has to be a citizen of the United States for 9 years or more. He or she must also live in the state they represent at election time. The qualifications to become a U.S. senator are stated in the U.S. Constitution; article one, section three, and clause three. The constitution states that to become a senator an applicant must meet a specific age, citizenship, and state status. The U.S. Senate was formed in 1787 by a convention informally referred to as the 'Framers of the Constitution.' These requirements have been in effect since that time. For the current United States Congress, see 114th United States Congress. For state-level Houses of Representatives in the United States, see List of United States state legislatures. The minimum age requirement to serve as a U.S. senator is 30 years of age. James Madison, one of the framers of the Constitution, justified the higher age requirement in the Senate, saying serving as a senator required greater life experience and stability of character, according to the United States Senate (www.senate.gov)
30 years