When it comes to understanding the final months of Rep. Kay Granger’s congressional career, a handful of details are unequivocally true. We know, for example, that the Texas Republican — the first Republican woman to lead the House Appropriations Committee — announced in March that she would give up her gavel and forgo re-election, although Granger pledged to serve out the remainder of her term.
We also know that it was around this time that the congressman seemed to have difficulty delivering short, prepared remarks in the House of Representatives. Finally, we know that Granger stopped casting votes altogether in July. The Texan, who turned 81 earlier this year, was still a good member of the House of Representatives, but was for all intents and purposes missing from Capitol Hill.
As for where Granger spent her time while her colleagues were at work, the answer is only now coming into sharper focus.
Last week there were some reports indicating that Granger had been living in a nursing home for dementia patients for the past few months. While her office quickly pushed back against these claims, aides released a statement clarifying that the congresswoman had moved to a retirement home that provides memory care.
Her adult son, meanwhile, told The Dallas Morning News that the longtime Republican lawmaker has been experiencing “some dementia issues.”
As a matter of basic human decency and compassion, people of good will can certainly wish Granger well and hope that she receives quality care during a difficult time. Furthermore, it appears that the mystery of her whereabouts has been effectively solved.
But there are still some lingering concerns.
For starters, there’s the issue of transparency: a sitting member of Congress, rather than resign, moved into an assisted living facility and simply stopped casting votes. As The New York Times report noted, her office chose not to make this arrangement public.
Relatedly, there has been some discussion in recent days about the extent to which Republican leaders in the House of Representatives were aware of this and consciously chose to keep the information secret. A Fox News reporter quoted a senior Republican source as saying, referring to the party’s razor-thin majority in the House, “Frankly, we needed the numbers.”
But as a Politico report adds, there’s also a broader conversation going on about the number of septuagenarians and octogenarians in Congress, and the health problems some of them have faced:
The revelations are sparking a bipartisan response and prompting criticism of other senior lawmakers. Some of the sharpest comments came from the right, with the Granger news prompting Elon Musk to issue cognitive tests for elected officials, and Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky saying he is “more concerned about the members of Congress who have dementia and are still voting .”
The same report quoted Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman of California as saying, “We need to make at least some norm change. It should be truly unacceptable that members have to completely miss months of communication with the public and with their own colleagues.”
Huffman continued: “Loyalty is a super important part of the work we do, but there is a point at which it becomes damaging to the institution and to our democracy – and I think we need to have a conversation about that. ”
With the Granger story in mind, it’s a safe bet that the conversation will get quite louder.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
