Why so many members are leaving Congress

Some 53 U.S. Senators and representatives are leaving Congress this year. What’s driving this flood of retirements? What does it mean for the 2024 election and beyond?

Rep. John Sarbanes, Democratic congressman. He’s represented Maryland’s third congressional district in the House of Representatives since 2007. He’s retiring from Congress this year.

Robert Draper, Domestic correspondent for the New York Times.

Nathaniel Rakich, senior editor and senior elections analyst at FiveThirtyEight.

Meredith McGehee, expert on Congress, lobbying and ethics in government. She’s been working on government ethics-related issues in Washington for more than 30 years.

Part I 

ANTHONY BROOKS:  There's something of an exodus underway in Washington, D.C. Some 60 members of Congress are quitting the Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. It's an unusually high number of departures. And while lawmakers are leaving for a variety of reasons, a major theme is growing disappointment with the institution, even discussed.

KEN BUCK: It is the worst year. Of the nine years and three months that I've been in Congress. Having talked to former members, it's the worst year in 40, 50 years.

BROOKS: That's former Representative Ken Buck of Colorado, a Republican who announced last year that he wouldn't seek re-election. Then Buck decided to leave even earlier, resigning this past March.

When he quit, Buck told CNN he was increasingly frustrated with Congress.

BUCK: I think this place is dysfunctional. Instead of having decourm, instead of operating in a professional manner. This place has just evolved into this bickering and nonsense and not really doing the job for the American people.

BROOKS: Buck is in good company. Another Republican who's calling it quits is Patrick McHenry. Last December, the North Carolina congressman announced he wouldn't run for another term. Here's McHenry talking about why on the CBS news podcast, The Takeout.

McHENRY: This is my 20th year in Congress. I have a six year term limit on running my committee.

That's what I came to do is move policy. I've moved policy, and I'm at the end of my term limit. It was a natural end for me. And to be influential in this Congress, which has been really rough to make policy. Very rough to make policy. So I'm happy with the course I've taken. Disappointed at the state of Congress, though. That's for sure.

BROOKS: And plenty of Democrats are also frustrated and abandoning the congressional ship. They include representative Tony Cárdenas of California.

It's gotten more difficult because as we see right now the Republicans trying to think that it's a good thing to try to dismantle government instead of serving the people.

When I see my colleagues in the hallway, we say, hello, how you doing? Things of that nature. But when those cameras come on, too many of my colleagues play to that camera and they want to make it look like we're fighting all the time.

BROOKS: The wave of departures from the U.S. House and Senate means decades of lawmaking experience is leaving Washington, D.C. And it's happening at a time when performative obstruction seems to be a growing force in Congress. So what does this mean for the 2024 election? And most importantly, the future of Congress as an institution. Let's start this hour with another member who's retiring from the U.S. House this year.

Congressman John Sarbanes is a Democrat who's represented Maryland's third district in the House of Representatives since 2007. Congressman Sarbanes, it's great to have you. Welcome to On Point.

JOHN SARBANES: Hey, Anthony, it's good to be here.

BROOKS: Why do you think so many people are calling it quits right now?

SARBANES: I think you alluded up front there that people leave for different reasons. You do have 60 people leaving that can strike one out of context as a mass exodus. But that's about 10%, a little bit more than 10% of the 2 institutions of the House and the Senate when you put together.

So about 90% of people are not leaving. And I think you have to be careful not to paint with a broad brush the decisions that people make to leave. They do it for all kinds of reasons. Some have been here for a while, like me, 18 years, and it was just the right moment. McHenry just said that in your opening, right moment for certain people to go do other things.

They feel a sense of accomplishment, but they also feel like it's time for a change. Others leave because, some opportunity is presented, it's irresistible. And then there are people who get frustrated. Some of them may be people that are would be frustrated, regardless of how the institutions working, because maybe they get here and it's not their cup of tea.

Others, I think, do feel that it's tougher to get things done, that there's less of a kind of bipartisan overall environment here. And it's discouraging for them, so there's different reasons why people find the exits.

BROOKS: Let me ask you about your situation. You were quoted in an article by Robert Draper in the New York Times.

We're going to be hearing from him later in this hour, in just a bit. But in the article, you talked about this. You said, quote, how much an institution's ability to function depends on members treating that institution with respect. And you said, when you have these rabble rousers coming in who are declaring that government serves no good purpose and they want to tear it to the ground, that's a cancer inside the place.

And you went on to talk about how the rabble rousers have all but incapacitated Congress. And I have to believe that, at least in part, informed your decision to not seek reelection.

SARBANES: It's an observation on one of the dynamics that can make things difficult from one day to the next.

You do have some people within the institution that seem bent on taking the institution down. That's nowhere near the majority. I think that the majority of people that are there from both sides of the aisle, frankly, are there for the right reasons. They want to get things done. They want to make policy.

They want to carry out sort of the mandate that they are getting from the constituents and the voters. In any large institution, with a lot of players in the mix, you're going to have some people that make it more difficult for the majority to move forward. And yes, I think the number of folks that fit into that category has probably gone up in the last few years.

I don't think it's a critical mass. I think you can still accomplish things there. Albeit it's more challenging.

BROOKS: Right more challenging. Well, Mr. Sarbanes, you come from a political family. Your father, [Paul] Sarbanes, served in the U.S. Senate. There was a time when a lot of people thought that you might follow in his footsteps and end up in the U.S. Senate. So it seems like this work is in your blood. Why did you decide to not seek a 10th term in Congress?

SARBANES: So actually, it's because it's in my blood, that I decided not to seek it. And what I mean by that is I come from a family very committed to public service. My father, Paul Sarbanes, actually, was in the Senate.

BROOKS: I'm sorry. I miss, I misidentified him. Of course it's Paul Sarbanes.

SARBANES: For 30 years, he was in the House for six years. So that was 36 years of service. And now I will have done 18.

But frankly, that means I've understood from the outset that there's a lot of different ways to serve the community. I had the chance for the last 18 years to do that as an elected official. But before I got to Congress, I did a lot of work with nonprofits. I found other ways to serve the community, and that was very rewarding to me, as well.

So for me, it's just reaching this sort of very natural moment in time when I'm thinking, okay, I've still got some time left to go serve and contribute to the community in other ways. I'd like to go do that. So it's less about pushing off on my current job than it is about being excited and motivated to go do some other things.

And that just gets back to the point, Anthony, that I think you have to look at each individual members' thought process. In terms of why they're leaving the institution and not paint with a broad brush.

BROOKS: And yet I do want to ask you about this, a lot of people were disappointed, even shocked when you decided to quit. I'm looking at a statement from representative Steny Hoyer. He called you a vigorous defender of American democracy.

You've made campaign finance reform a priority. You were the lead sponsor of the For the People Act. So what do you say to folks who worry that if we're losing people like John Sarbanes, that doesn't bode well for the future of Congress?

SARBANES: I am very committed to those things that Steny was alluding to, particularly working on the basic kind of infrastructure of our democracy, that For the People Act you mentioned has now got the label, the Freedom to Vote Act.

And it's been made the number one bill when Democrats have held the gavel over the last three congresses, because we know we've got to ensure ballot access. We've got to fix partisan gerrymandering, and we have to deal with campaign finance and big money out there, which is causing a lot of cynicism in the country.

But here's the upside of my relationship to that effort. We built a team over a number of congresses, a big coalition of folks that are pushing that forward, and I'm still going to be on that team, even though I'm not going to be wearing the hat of a member of Congress. And it's a team that people ought to be participating on, wherever they are, whatever their vocation is, because it goes to the basic fabric of the democracy.

When I am leaving, there's plenty of people that are still on that team. And let me make that point more broadly to you. Yes, upwards of 10% of these combined in institutions are finding the exit in this campaign season in this cycle, but we've had a lot of overlap. I've been there 18 years.

So if there's someone who has been there 10 years with me, and we've worked together on fixing democracy or on the environment or addressing the opioid crisis. We had a lot of shared experience and work there. And they've got that expertise now to carry forward. And frankly, that's how these institutions ought to operate.

You shouldn't go there, stay forever, be carried out on a stretcher. You should go there, make a contribution for a meaningful amount of time and then let other people come in with new energy, new perspective and a new opportunity to contribute.

BROOKS: So on balance, we only have about 30 seconds left or so, but on balance, 18 years in Congress, despite the complaints of many and the rabble rousers that you alluded to, you were able to accomplish something.

You feel pretty good about what you were able to get done in those 18 years.

SARBANES: I feel very gratified with the opportunity to do things for the Chesapeake Bay to work on health care issues. Obviously lift up the importance of strengthening our democracy. And I think many of my colleagues feel satisfaction there.

Is it tougher on a daily basis to get to yes, to get these things accomplished. Yes, it is. I have to concede that, but it's possible to do. And here's the thing. The candidates running to succeed those who are leaving Congress now. A lot of them are just terrific people. They have the right instincts. They want to do good things.

They want to make good policy.

Part II

BROOKS: Today, we're talking about a wave of retirements among U.S. senators and members of Congress this cycle. We're joined now by Robert Draper. He's in Washington, D. C., where he writes about politics for The New York Times, and he's been reporting on Congress for 15 years, and he's reported specifically on this issue.

And, Robert Draper, good to have you. Thanks for joining us.

ROBERT DRAPER: Thanks for having me on.

BROOKS: I think you heard my talk with John Sarbanes. He acknowledged that, yes, it's more difficult to get things done in Congress, no question about that. But he also suggested that during his 18 years, he managed to get stuff done and he leaves with what sounded like a reasonably good feeling about his 18 years there.

What's your response to what you heard there?

DRAPER: My response is that what the Congressman has said is in keeping what many of the other departing members of Congress have said, that they can hold their heads high. They're proud of what they've done, that they feel like they're ready for a new chapter in life, et cetera.

But it's also the case that everything that he has said and others like him who are leaving have said, could have applied four years ago, six years ago, could apply four years from now, six years from now. And yet what's really striking is that they're all choosing now to depart. And I think what's particularly notable is not the sheer numbers.

54, I believe is the current count of those who are leaving at the end of this term, but the quality of the people who are, and the congressman is one of them, he's not a guy who's at the very end of a career. He certainly has his wherewithal about him. He has a great deal of influence within his own caucus.

And the same is the case with some of the folks that, you had a clip from Patrick McHenry. The Republican congressman from North Carolina, who it's true, is leaving after 20 years in the House. It's also true that he is 47 years old and is one of the most influential people in the Republican conference.

Everyone.

BROOKS: And he was often talked about as someone who was most likely to succeed Speaker pro tem, right?

DRAPER: That's right. Exactly. Yeah. So he's on everybody's list as someone who's very likely to remain in leadership, perhaps even the top of leadership. And yet, here he is leaving. And it's also the case that a lot of young people are leaving people like Jake LaTurner of Kansas, Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, who in fact already left a few months ago. Gallagher, I think, served something like five or six years. LaTurner is just into a second year. La Turner is 36, Gallagher 40.

And again, these two are viewed as rising stars. So you have people who are leaving their committee chairs like McHenry, and you have these people who show extreme promise within their caucus like LaTurner and Gallagher.

And probably what's additionally striking is who's not leaving.

So these are all people who are known for achieving compromise, when what's necessary with working to legislate. The people on the other hand, who not only aren't leaving. But seem to be coming in greater numbers are the so-called rabble rousers. As you guys were talking about a few minutes ago, the people who are more inclined to view Congress as a performing arts center, then as a place where governance takes place.

BROOKS: You mentioned Gallagher. Let's play some tape. Former Congressman Mike Gallagher. He's a Republican from Wisconsin. He resigned from Congress in April of 2024 before the end of his term. And as you mentioned, Robert, he was seen as a rising star in the GOP, first elected in 2016. But he expressed frustration with the Republican caucus particularly during last year's fight among Republicans to choose a new speaker of the house.

So here's Gallagher speaking to reporters last year after Republicans failed to elect Congressman Jim Jordan as speaker and Congressman Tom Emmer dropped out because of a lack of support.

GALLAGHER: My theory is this is the product of decades of institutional neglect. So if you have people that feel no loyalty to an institution like Congress, because it's weak.

They've gone from being the most powerful branch of government to the weakest. And they're not going to abide by the rules of conference or the norms of congressional behavior. And it just seems like if you disagree with someone on one policy position, like a lot of people disagree with Emmer's position on gay marriage, that's enough to say you won't support him for Speaker.

We can't operate that way.

BROOKS: And Robert, here's an example of the way some members of Congress engage in a kind of disruptive performance. So this is Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican, questioning EPA Administrator Michael Regan at an oversight hearing this past July. Reagan laughed at Boebert as she repeatedly asked him which EPA rules he would repeal following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn the Chevron ruling.

Now in this exchange with Reagan, Boebert made it clear that she did not understand the ruling.

REP. LAUREN BOEBERT:  I'm asking about your rogue bureaucrats that have enacted these unconstitutional regulations. Are you going to repeal them? Are you going to continue to implement them? Or are you going to stop altogether?

MICHAEL REGAN: Do you understand the ruling?

BOEBERT: Do you understand the ruling of the Supreme Court?

REGAN: I do and so your question is ill-formed. No, we’re not – we’re not gonna stop --

BOEBERT: Will you be repealing – so you’re going to unconstitutionally continue with these --

REGAN: We're going to — we're going to adhere to the Supreme Court and continue to do our work in accordance to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court made a ruling --

BOEBERT: Which ones are you going to repeal?

REGAN: The Supreme Court didn't tell us to repeal anything.

BOEBERT: They have been deemed unconstitutional.

REGAN: No. (LAUGHS)

BOEBERT: Absolutely they have. This was a huge victory.

BROOKS: So you heard EPA administrator Regan laughing there at the end. So Robert Draper, talk about those two moments.

It seems like there are a couple of examples there about what's going on in Congress and what people are frustrated by. And as you said, who's leaving and who's remaining.

DRAPER: It's Congresswoman Boebert there just illustrated, the performance aspect that has overtaken so much of congressional proceedings, particularly committee hearings.

That are usually known for being pretty banal. Pretty boring, frankly, but these are moments where a someone like Bobert gets to be confrontational. There are moments that are pulled out and that they can put on social media. They can solicit online donations by showing what a fighter they are.

In this particular case, there's Boebert basically saying there are rogue bureaucrats, a deep state that the EPA is now empowered, and in fact really required to get rid of. And obviously she doesn't understand. What the ruling was, but that's beside the point. I should say that she's a Republican. And what I heard over and over from the Republicans, that I interviewed for this story of mine was that, look, we're tired of these theatrical people, but these theatrical people exist on both sides of the aisle.

There may be some truth to that, but even those who are very active on social media amongst the Democratic Party are largely not a thorn in the side of the Democratic leadership. They tend to be willing to get things done. Conversely, they don't try to hold up proceedings for the sake of a great online moment that ultimately will be clickbait for small donors.

And so it's really a distinction with a difference that the Boebert's of Congress, the ones who are obstructionists tends overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, to be from the Republican party.

BROOKS: I want to play a clip, to give a sense of some of the frustration faced by some members of Congress.

So this comes from some reporting that I did in April 2023. I covered Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren's announcement that she would run for a third term. So she launched her re-election campaign in Boston's historically Black Roxbury neighborhood, where a few community activists heckled her.

Warren, of course, is a Democrat. The hecklers were demanding that she support a reparations bill immediately. The heckling got out of hand. It disrupted the meeting. And Massachusetts Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, who represents that part of Boston, also a Democrat, took the stage to try to regain control of the event, which she did.

And in so doing, she expressed a lot of frustration in her effort to explain how Congress works or doesn't work. So here's Ayanna Pressley.

PRESSLEY: But I alone cannot deliver that. I am in government, we are part of legislative body. Senator Warren and I are in the same body! I gotta get you to understand what we're dealing with in Washington. I have colleagues who debate for two hours that they can bring their guns to commit a hearing. This is who we are with. This is why the Voting Rights Act hasn't been restored. This is why we haven't banned assault weapons.

It's because we're being obstructed.

BROOKS: All right, so that's Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley. She is running for reelection, by the way, as is Senator Elizabeth Warren. But Robert, I wanted to play that cut of tape just to give a sense to our listeners of the extent to the frustration that all members of Congress have the potential to feel at different times.

And there's Ayanna Pressley trying to explain what she's up against in Congress in an effort to regain the room on behalf of Elizabeth Warren, I'm just wondering your reaction to what you just heard.

DRAPER: It's what Pressley's saying there is a reminder of the balance that I think has been thrown off course in  this legislative body, which is the balance between risk and reward.

And it used to be that, yes, you would find vehement opposition on the other side of the aisle and oftentimes a unified opposition, and that could be frustrating. That was seen during the Tea Party days, for example, in 2011 to 2014, I would say. But you still could get fundamental agreement on a lot of the basics like appropriations.

And now it's a heavy lift even to be able to achieve the basic necessities of keeping the government open, of electing a speaker, of passing the defense authorization bill. All of these things were traditionally low hanging fruit and that at least could give solace to some members that were doing the basics, now doing the basics requires so much energy that it ultimately begs the question, Is it worth it now? What do I mean by is it worth it? It means that, on the other side of the equation, Congress hasn't given itself a pay raise since 2009. Okay, they're paid more than the average person, but they also have to maintain two residences or choose to live in the Capitol.

In other words stay in a tax funded office as their habitat, which is probably not what the founders had in mind.

BROOKS: And Robert, just to jump in and just to bring our listeners into this. So the pay is what, $170,000 something a year for a member of Congress?

DRAPER: That's right.

Yeah.

BROOKS: Which sounds like a good salary, but as you point out, a lot of them are jetting back and forth across the country, maintaining two residences. So it's not a huge salary, even though it's well above an average salary.

DRAPER: That's right. And of course, it then begs a question, which is that yeah, it's $174,000 by the way.

And it begs a question that if my wages are not going up while the cost of living is going up. And there's no end in sight, then how much longer can I put up with this financial strain again with two residences, when at the same time I'm not getting anything meaningful done. And even the kind of gimmick stuff comes at exceedingly great cost and that can drag on for days and even weeks as the speaker fight, for example, did.

It's when you come to that sort of crossroads, if you're a member of Congress, that you finally ask, as Patrick McHenry put it to me, why am I here?

BROOKS: Ken, you wrote, Robert you wrote a piece in the New York Times about this, and I want to read one passage that really struck me about what you call the malaise of foreign policy.

And here's just a bit of what you wrote. You said, if anything, the malaise encompassing the house extends well beyond those who have chosen not to serve another term. You look around that chamber, there's just a look of despair, said Brian Higgins, a Democrat who represented districts in Western New York for 19 years before retiring in February.

Quote, I think a lot more members would be leaving if they had alternatives, he said. So I was really struck by that idea of malaise. You interviewed some 20 members of Congress for that article. What did you hear? What were some of the common themes around that, including that theme of malaise?

DRAPER: Yeah again, it's that a lot of people who enter public service, I think the majority of them really do want to serve the public, want to get something done, want therefore to be able to come back to their constituents and say, here are the things I did that I was uniquely able to do and that were heavy lifts and required working with the other side of the aisle, but are tangible benefit to the community.

Very few can say that now. Instead, they spend all of their time arguing with the other side and along the way increasingly getting death threats . ... So of the 20 people that I interviewed for the story, 20. I'm basically methodologically, what I did. There are 54 retiring.

There are 31 of those 20 who are retiring, not by death, not by scandal. Not by the decision to move on to, say, run for the senator, run for the governor, but just because they don't want to do it anymore that, of those 20 that I interviewed, I think all of them said to me that they'd been receiving death threats, which is uncanny.

And a lot of these are just able legislators who have committed the sin of working with the other side of the aisle and are therefore, in the case of the Republican party. Identified as rhinos ,republicans in name only and by the way, the threats extend beyond themselves personally and often to family members. So when you're away a lot, achieving very little not making much money. And you know your phone is ringing at home.

Your kids are being threatened because your dad's name was Bannon's podcast or something. Then once again, you have to ask, Why am I doing this?

BROOKS: Right? I wanted to ask Congressman John Sarbanes this question because he has this long history going back to when his dad, Paul Sarbanes, was in the Senate.

And you often hear about this lowing growing lack of cooperation between the two parties these days, whereas back in John Sarbanes's day, you'd hear about members of Congress who would talk about political differences during the day, but then members from opposing parties might get together after work for drinks.

They were even friends. Do you get the sense that sense of comity and cooperation is greatly diminished compared to those days?

DRAPER: It has all been evaporated.

BROOKS: That's gotta be tough for people who are doing that job.

DRAPER: Yeah, it is. There's it's, to be seen if you're a Republican with a Democrat, being friendly, much less socializing, is to all but have a Scarlet letter affixed to  your forehead.

You're definitely a rhino then if you do that. And what this means among other things is that relationships aren't formed in a common language of, look, here's someone I'd like to be able to to talk to you, because I think that we don't agree on 90% of the things, but here's a 10% solution here.

Here's a 10% Venn diagram overlap where we do agree that still happens.  But the number is decreasing at a rapid rate. And it's also that leadership in both parties doesn't exactly encourage it anymore. They want unity and unity means you're in the minority opposition to everything.

Part III

BROOKS: Today, we’re talking about the wave of U.S. lawmakers leaving Washington. Some 53 members of Congress are quitting the Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives — the largest number in decades.

What does this bode for the future of the Congress? Meredith McGehee worries it will weaken an already shaky institution.

MEREDITH McGEHEE: Congress is much more fragile than people realize. It's very easy for these institutions to be kind of brought to a halt. I mean, look what happened with McCarthy when he got ousted as speaker. I mean, you had vote after vote. You had moments where if we had had some kind of national emergency, Congress would have not been able to respond.

BROOKS: McGehee is an expert on Congress and ethics in government who’s worked in Washington for more than 30 years.

McGEHEE: When people are leaving, and the main reason that they're leaving is frustration, that means that there's something rotten at the core. They want to come in and be policy makers, and there's too many things, too many flaws in the system, and therefore they're frustrated and they leave. That means that the institution itself, whether it's the House or the Senate, really need to take a look at how they work.

BROOKS: McGehee says there is an effort underway to do just that in the House Modernization Committee. Members are looking at ways to make Congress a more rewarding and enjoyable place to work – through changes both big and small.

McGEHEE:  You know, if you're not in Congress it may not seem important, but. Can you have two people sponsor a bill rather than have a sponsor and a secondary sponsor? Can you change the way that members get their representational allowance? Are there ways to force a committee to actually bring up a bill if it has bipartisan co-sponsorships?

BROOKS: That sounds promising. But wait … the chair of the House Modernization Committee, Derek Kilmer, a Democrat from Washington is … yep, you guessed it, leaving, as well, opting not to run for reelection. McGehee wonders who will take his place.

McGEHEE: The people that are willing to do the work, sometimes the kind of nonglamorous work, that stalls if you don't have people that are willing to kind of come in and put in the sweat. I've always thought the measure of a politician is really how much of their political capital are they willing to spend on difficult issues? Because a lot of members these days are just scared to death to spend any political capital. They're just afraid that they might get defeated, not get the job they want after they leave.

BROOKS: McGehee also worries about the current political moment – when so many on the right are attacking and undermining political institutions, including Congress. She says it reminds her of former President Ronald Reagan’s famous – or infamous – declaration in his 1981 inaugural address, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

McGEHEE: It was a kind of a difficult period, I think, to find some members of Congress that understood what they wanted to do when they got to Washington. And I worry about that with Trump in that he is someone who attacks government and spreads disinformation about government. So, if there are people who run for Congress that are inspired by him, what does that mean about what they do when they're in government?

BROOKS: That’s Meredith McGehee, an expert on Congress who’s worked in Washington for more than 30 years.

BROOKS: And still with us is Robert Draper. He writes about politics with New York Times. He's been reporting on Congress for 15 years, and let me bring in Nathaniel Rakich. He's senior editor and senior elections analyst at FiveThirtyEight.

Nathaniel, Good to have you. Thanks for joining the conversation.

NATHANIEL RAKICH: Hey Anthony. Thanks for having me.

BROOKS: I'd love to get a quick reaction from what you've been listening to. We're talking of course, about this wave of resignations. What's your quick sort of top line about what's happening?

RAKICH: Yeah, first of all, I make a distinction between resignations and retirement.

So resignation is when a member of Congress just basically drops everything, says, I quit. I'm leaving right now. And is no longer sitting in Congress. And sometimes it triggers a special election. That's obviously much more dramatic than just not running for reelection, which, of course, dozens of members of Congress do every year and accounts for a majority of the retirement slash resignations that we're seeing in this Congress.

BROOKS: So put this in this current wave of departures into a sort of historical context. There's 50 something members of Congress between the House and the Senate leaving. We've been talking to Robert about those numbers. How does this period compare to the past, when we've seen high numbers of departures, either because people resigned, were forced to resign, or chose not to run?

RAKICH: Yeah, so I did an analysis looking at this very thing going back the last 20 years, and in general, you see the number steadily increasing over time. This actually isn't the absolute highest number that we've had. It's actually the third highest number of departures that we've had, but the last two were in exceptional circumstances.

So the highest number of departures was in the 2018 cycle, and that was a year when it was the #MeToo scandal. So a lot of members of Congress had to resign because of that. A lot of members of Congress also resigned to join Donald Trump's cabinet in early 2017. So that accounted for a lot of the spike.

And then the second highest number of departures was in the 2022 cycle, which was a redistricting year. And of course, that's the time that every 10 years, after the decennial census, the Congressional lines are redrawn. And as a result, a lot of members just don't have a place to run anymore. Their seats are no longer competitive for their party, for instance, or maybe they've been drawn in with somebody else of the same party and they lose a primary.

And so you always see a lot of turnover in those redistricting years. And the fact that we've had this year come in third place when we don't have any of those kind of exceptional situations, basically, I think the most exceptional situation is the fact that we've had an extremely dysfunctional Congress.

We've had two speaker fights, the first one in last January to elect Kevin McCarthy in the first place. I think that went to 15 ballots. And then of course, when he was ousted and that we didn't have a speaker for weeks and that has led to what has, it looks like it's going to go down as one of the least productive Congresses in the last several decades.

And so I think if you're looking for reasons as to why this year seems to be an exception in terms of the high level of departures, I think you have to start there. Yeah, I think that makes sense.

BROOKS: Robert, I want to bring you back here. You've been covering Congress for what, it's 15 years?

Do I have that right?

DRAPER: Something like that. Something like that. Close enough. It feels like an eternity.

BROOKS: Okay, somewhere between 15 years and an eternity. How does this wave of resignations compare to the rest of the time that you've spent covering this issue in Congress?

DRAPER: Nathaniel's certainly right.

Statistically, you know that it is not the highest that I've seen. But what I want to underscore again is that it's who's retiring and who's not retiring. That's so significant. In the past, you just didn't have people who had been trying forever to become committee chairs and finally attain a chairmanship.

Then leave. You didn't have people like Mike Gallagher and Jake LaTurner who were widely understood to be stars pretty much abruptly, with two to three terms in, say I've had it. And you also did have, conversely, retirements forced by people who were ...consigned to the margins by leadership. And discouraged from running again or were primaried instead, those kind of people are growing in numbers, the kind of anti legislators. The proud obstructionists, while the people who have the most accomplished records are the ones seeking the exits.

BROOKS: Right and Nathaniel, when you talk about somewhere between 50 and 60 people leaving, that's many decades, if not, sorry, my math isn't good.

But you're talking about a lot of years of experience leaving the institution. Could you talk a little bit about the effect that has on Congress?

RAKICH: Yeah, you're definitely talking about lots of experience leaving the institution. But I do want to echo Robert's point about the nature of the people who are leaving.

And that historically, it has been people who are just old and have just served in Congress for 30 years, who have been leaving. And that's just a natural thing. Obviously, once you hit a certain age, you're ready to ride off into the sunset. And we're not seeing that anymore. So back in 2008, just 11% of the people who left Congress were people who had served less than 10 years in Congress.

So majority, a strong majority were those kind of older tenured members. This year, it's about half who are, have served less than 10 years. So you are seeing these people like Mike Gallagher, who are just, they're coming in, they're serving a few terms, they're saying, you know what, this isn't as good as I thought it was going to be, and they're heading for the exits.

And I think that is a real problem, because those people aren't able to build up the seniority in Congress. That obviously is a big part of how Congress functions, and that in turn means that a lot of the institutional memory of how to pass bills and kind of work with colleagues productively, that doesn't get passed along as well, and the people who have experience with that, who are just gaining experience with that, and a lot of people who are again, considered rising stars, like Robert was saying, are deciding, this just isn't worth my time.

And as a result, that does leave more space like a vacuum to fill basically for the rabble rousers, for also outside actors like lobbyists, who can say to maybe a new member of Congress who comes in and to fill one of these empty seats. Hey, I've been around a long time. I know how to pass a bill, and of course, I think that a lot of Americans would, maybe they like the idea of more turnover in Congress, because there's a big attitude of let's throw the bums out, but when they learn about who is taking the reins instead, they might not be so happy about it.

BROOKS: I want to play another piece of tape. This is former House Speaker Paul Ryan who's been critical of the way Congress is functioning or not functioning in recent years. So he announced back in 2018, of course, that he would not run for reelection, and he talked with Yahoo Finance this past May about the state of U.S. politics, particularly as Georgia Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene filed a motion to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson after she disagreed with his efforts to negotiate with Democrats to pass a $1.2 trillion funding bill.

PAUL RYAN: You have a few nihilists who are not interested in seeing their team succeed, but building a brand for themselves, this is the kind of behavior you're going to get.

So it won't succeed, but it's just a nihilistic approach that some of these members are taking. It makes the place ungovernable. Knowing this was going to cost him, potentially, his job, Mike Johnson still did the right thing. I've always said you can't be good at these jobs unless you're willing to lose them.

You fight for the institution, do what you think is right, that's exactly what Mike Johnson's done.

BROOKS: That was former Speaker Paul Ryan talking last May. Robert Draper, you talked about death threats among the challenges that these members of Congress face, I guess some of them on a daily basis sometimes for doing something as simple as trying to cooperate with someone across the aisle.

I'm curious to what you found out about the effect of January 6th, the assault on the Capitol, which you write represented a sort of nadir that has been difficult to move past for some members of Congress. What did you find out about that?

DRAPER: I found an incredibly stark difference between how Democrats have internalized that day and how Republicans have.

In fact, a former Republican member of Congress, Chris Stewart said to me, basically, look, Democrats are from Mars and Republicans are from Venus, when it comes to January the 6th. For them, it's a super traumatizing event for us. It was just a bad day and we got past it and it's true.

The Congresswoman Ann Kuster, a Democrat from New Hampshire told me that was a major factor in her decision to retire because it was not just that the event on its face was traumatic. Traumatizing and continued to be, but that it was infuriating for her to then deal with Republicans who are so flippant about the issue.

She's found that it's impossible to work with them because of this. And there are a lot of people who basically have had the view, and they tend to be far more Democrats and Republicans that this is not normal, and we shouldn't view it as normal. Just as it's not normal for a member of Congress to be receiving a death threat, Grace Napolitano of California is retiring at the age of 87.

So she fits in the description that Nathaniel said is historically the case for retirees. But what she also told me is that she's been getting death threats the last few years. Now, I would venture to guess that the vast majority of Americans have never even heard of this Congresswoman.

The idea and by the way, she's no one's idea of a firebrand provocateur. And yet she is getting death threats. Now you look at someone you had on the show a few minutes ago, Sarbanes, who was going to the nonprofit sector where he will be able, in his view to get at least as much, if not more done in that sector than he could in the legislative body, will probably be paid much more handsomely than he's being paid in Congress.

And he's not going to get any death threats. It's a qualitative difference in the lifestyle that he's choosing.

BROOKS: Speaking of Sarbanes, let me ask you both about a point that he made with me toward the end of that conversation I had with him. And he was basically saying, there's a positive aspect to this, and this gets down to the idea that there's been a lot of talk, especially in this current election cycle, about people hanging on too long. Joe Biden is 81. The Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, is 82, a Republican leader in the Senate. So there's an argument that this is actually good for Congress, that more people are willing to leave at an earlier age and make room for fresh blood. What do you think, Nathaniel?

RAKICH: I don't really buy that argument. I think there's been a lot of research.

BROOKS: I had a feeling. Yeah.

RAKICH: There's been a lot of research in political science into this idea of congressional term limits, which of course are very popular, but would require a constitutional amendment.

And people, sounds great in theory, right? Is that you get fresh blood in and new perspectives and everything like that. But what the political science finds is that it leads to less productivity, because of that loss of institutional memory that I mentioned. It leads to people like lobbyists taking more control of the process and just generally a less responsive government.

So I think that actually having more experience and institutional knowledge in Congress is a good thing.

BROOKS: Robert, same question to you. What do you think of that argument?

DRAPER: That view presupposes that the incentive structure is so powerful to recruit young talent that it'll be fairly easy to do, that's not the case.

And he knows it. It's become a more dangerous place to live. It's become a financially less remunerative body to work in. And there have been real recruiting challenges that both parties have faced as a result of that. And even leaving aside what Nathaniel has aptly pointed out, that the loss of institutional knowledge from someone who has been around the block and understands how to get things done, in the manner of the Lion of Congress, John Dingell, who in his final terms, was still running rings around everybody else in the institution and his ability to get things done for his state of Michigan.

That's a kind of loss that can't be recouped just by fresh faces, even assuming you can get them.