For the second time in less than a month, the House approved a measure aimed at keeping experienced Capitol Police officers on the job longer, this time sending the bill directly to the president's desk after a voice vote Tuesday.

The legislation would give the Capitol Police Board authority to raise the mandatory retirement waiver age for officers to as high as 62, up from the current cap of 60. Under existing law, Capitol Police officers must retire at 57 unless the board grants an exemption. The bill does not mandate a new ceiling; it simply gives the board the option to set one anywhere between 57 and 62.

The move comes as the agency continues to struggle with persistent staffing shortfalls that Republican leaders on Capitol Hill say demand an immediate fix. Around 60 sworn officers are currently working on retirement waivers, more than double the size of a typical recruiting class, a figure that underscores just how thin the force's bench has become.

Two bills in four weeks

The House had already passed a broader version of the proposal last month, led by House Administration Chair Bryan Steil, R-Wis. That earlier bill would have raised the waiver age as high as 65. The Senate, however, moved a narrower version last week under the leadership of Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who chairs the Senate Rules and Administration Committee. McConnell's bill capped the waiver at 62.

Rather than send the two chambers into a drawn-out conference fight, the House cleared the Senate's version by voice vote Tuesday, ensuring the bill heads straight to the president for signature.

Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., made the case for the measure on the floor:

"We need to make sure that we not only can keep attracting new officers to the force, but when you've got officers in the prime of their career, that everybody agrees are worthy of keeping on, that they have that flexibility."

Steil, who championed the earlier, more aggressive version, framed the stakes in blunt terms. He warned that without the statutory change, dozens of veteran officers face forced retirement in the near future, at exactly the moment the Capitol Police can least afford to lose them.

"Unless we pass this statutory change, each of these officers will be forced to retire within the next few years. These forced retirements will only compound the staffing shortage issue that we're facing within the Capitol Police force."

Union: A first step, not a solution

Capitol Police union chairman Gus Papathanasiou welcomed the bill but stopped well short of calling it a fix. He described both the Senate version and Steil's earlier proposal as good first steps toward addressing the agency's staffing problems, and then urged Congress to go further.

"The authority of the age waiver by the USCP Board to 62 or even 65, will help a little with the manpower issues we face on a daily basis, but Congress needs to look at retaining experienced trained officers for years to come."

Papathanasiou pointed to a deeper structural problem: parts of the federal retirement system that he said belong to another era. The rules governing officer pay and benefits, he argued, have not kept pace with what state and local police departments now offer, making it easy for trained Capitol Police officers to walk out the door and lateral to better-compensated agencies.

"What may have worked in the 1980s and 1990s doesn't cut it in today's law enforcement environment."

One issue the union chairman singled out is whether overtime pay should count toward retirement benefit calculations. That question has lingered for years, and Papathanasiou said resolving it would do more to entice officers to stay than simply raising the age at which they can work.

"To just hire a police officer here at USCP so they can lateral to another agency is just throwing away recruitment and hiring money."

That is a line Congress should take seriously. Training officers costs taxpayers real money. Losing them to competing agencies because the federal retirement system is stuck in a previous decade is not a staffing strategy, it is a staffing leak.

What the bill does, and doesn't do

The measure is modest by design. It does not raise the mandatory retirement age itself. It does not guarantee any officer a longer career. It gives the Capitol Police Board, on which Capitol Police Chief Michael Sullivan sits as a nonvoting member, the discretion to extend waivers up to age 62 instead of the current 60.

That distinction matters. The board retains full control over who stays and who goes. Officers still have to earn the waiver, and the board still has to grant it. The bill expands a tool; it does not eliminate a standard.

The earlier House-passed version would have done the same thing, except it set the upper boundary at 65 rather than 62. By accepting the Senate's lower number, the House chose speed over scope, getting a bill to the president rather than haggling over three years of additional waiver authority.

In a Congress that has struggled to move even basic funding bills without internal revolt, bipartisan voice-vote passage on back-to-back versions of the same bill is notable. It suggests that Capitol security, at least, still commands broad agreement.

The bigger staffing picture

The Capitol Police have faced significant staffing challenges in recent years. The 60 officers currently on retirement waivers represent a sizable share of the force's experienced personnel, and losing them all within a few years would create a gap no recruiting class could easily fill.

Recruiting itself remains a challenge. Law enforcement agencies across the country are competing for the same pool of candidates, and the Capitol Police must contend with a federal pay and benefits structure that, by the union's account, lags behind many local departments.

Raising the waiver cap addresses the retention side of the equation. But as Papathanasiou made clear, it does nothing about the incentives that push mid-career officers to leave before they ever reach retirement age. Overtime pay, benefit calculations, and competitiveness with state and local agencies are all part of a broader problem that one bill cannot solve.

Congress has shown it can move quickly when the issue is straightforward. The question is whether lawmakers will follow through on the harder reforms, the kind that require real money and real structural changes to the federal retirement system. Short-term patches have become a habit on Capitol Hill, and the Capitol Police cannot afford to be governed by the same instinct.

What comes next

The bill now awaits the president's signature. No timeline for action has been announced, but the bipartisan nature of the vote and the straightforward scope of the measure suggest it is unlikely to sit on the desk for long.

If signed, the Capitol Police Board would gain immediate authority to extend waivers for officers between 57 and 62. How aggressively the board uses that authority will determine whether the bill has any practical effect on staffing levels.

For the union, the fight is far from over. Papathanasiou has made clear that the age waiver is a starting point, not a finish line. He wants Congress to address the retirement benefit structure itself, a far heavier legislative lift that would require navigating the same internal tensions that have complicated other major bills this session.

The Capitol Police protect every member of Congress, their staff, and the millions of Americans who visit the Capitol complex each year. Keeping experienced officers on the job is not a partisan issue. It is a basic obligation of the institution those officers are sworn to defend.

Whether Congress treats it that way, or moves on to the next headline, will say more about its priorities than any voice vote ever could.