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Kentucky Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, who served for almost two decades as the leader of the Senate Republicans, announced on Thursday that he would not seek reelection.

The announcement was made on his eighty-third birthday from the floor of the Senate, where the veteran lawmaker said that he would “not seek this honor” of serving in the upper chamber “an eighth time.” McConnell was indeed elected seven consecutive times to serve in the Senate.

As many in our nation are keenly aware, this comes after McConnell has suffered a handful of falls and even freezing incidents while trying to complete his work at the United States Capitol.

But one picture from the day of his announcement of McConnell exchanging a high-five with West Virginia Republican Senator Jim Justice while they scooted past each other on their respective wheelchairs tells the whole story of the geriatric nature of our national leadership.

Congress is becoming a nursing home.

McConnell was first elected to the Senate all the way back in 1985. His career started in 1975, when he served as an assistant attorney general in the administration of President Gerald Ford.

Justice was elected Governor of West Virginia back in 2017, and after eight years of serving as chief executive, the seventy-three-year-old started his first term in the Senate only this year.

That means Justice will be seventy-nine when he finishes his first term. McConnell will finish out his last two years in the Senate, meaning that he will leave at almost eighty-five. The average age in the Senate, by the way, is sixty-five, which is retirement age in most other workplaces.

We have heard for years that Congress needs term limits. The vast majority of Americans agree with that simple proposition, which clearly aligns with the original principles of the republic.

Countries cannot be run by geriatrics.

There are more examples beyond McConnell and Justice. California Democratic Representative Nancy Pelosi stepped down from party leadership but still serves in Congress at eighty-four years old. California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein died at ninety while still in office.

The most powerful legislative body on the planet was never meant to be a retirement club. We need new blood in Congress, and our current class of leadership needs to humbly step aside.

But as long as they refuse to do that, the nation will have no choice but to continue calling for term limits, which may be the only way to remove their clawed grips from the levels of power.