19%

— The share of the Congress taking office in January with military service. That’s down from the outgoing Congress’s 22% vet share – and less than a quarter of its modern-era 1977 peak, when 80% of the nation's 535 lawmakers were veterans. “Congress cuts the military slack because of their lack of experience,” military historian Richard Kohn told Time last year. “They don’t have a sense of the institutions and the culture, so they’re less likely to exercise insightful or determined oversight.”
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