COLUMBIA, Mo. - Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jason Kander said Congress needs to balance the budget every year and face the same budget restrictions as Missouri's government and families.
"Cutting wasteful spending should be a top priority for Congress, and a constitutional amendment mandating a balanced budget is a step in the right direction," Kander said at a Thursday news conference.
"Missouri working families make tough choices all the time, and they don't get a free pass for spending more money than they have.
"So, why should Congress be any different?"
Kander noted he voted for balanced budgets without raising taxes while he was in the Missouri House from 2009-13, when he became Missouri's secretary of state.
He acknowledged the man he wants to replace in the U.S. Senate - incumbent Republican Roy Blunt - has talked regularly about needing a federal balanced budget amendment.
But, he said, Blunt "has voted 12 times to raise his own pay and continues to vote for budgets with out-of-control spending. If you're in favor of balancing the budget, your votes should reflect that."
Blunt's campaign press secretary, Tate O'Connor, told the News Tribune: "As I'm sure you know, Sen. Blunt has co-sponsored the Balanced Budget Amendment in every Congress.
"This is the same Jason Kander who criticized Republicans for refusing to spend $1.1 billion in Obama's deficit-financed (2009) stimulus funds," he continued
While in the Legislature, O'Connor said, Kander voted several times against GOP proposals that would have capped state spending, looked for ways to reduce or eliminate bureaucracies and gave greater legislative oversight of state spending.
"It's easy to say you support a balanced budget, but nothing in Jason Kander's record would lead Missourians to believe he has any intention of following through with this election year promise," O'Connor said.
Kander said the federal budget could be balanced without cutting Social Security, Medicare and most other programs.
"There's unanimous agreement that there is wasteful spending," he explained. "Recently, Congress spent $225 million on a ship that the Navy didn't ask for; I think a half-billion dollars for four or five jets that the Pentagon didn't ask for.
"They're spending money to study goat yogurt."
At the federal level, he said: "You have to go line-by-line and make choices."
He noted Missouri's Constitution requires a balanced budget.
"We have a AAA credit rating," he said. "I just think Washington needs to learn from Missouri's example."
As Missouri's secretary of state, Kander said he cut his own budget by more than $1 million while still providing more services than the office ever has before.
Kander didn't endorse any specific amendment already proposed but said he's willing to look at any of them.
"We need to make sure that it does not leave room for legislative gimmicks, that allow for a lot of spending without Congress being held accountable," he said.
"What we need is something that is serious and strict and makes members of Congress actually do their job."
Also at the news conference, Lorenzo Lawson, senior pastor of Columbia's Chosen Generation Ministries and executive director of the Youth Empowerment Zone organization, said "our children and grandchildren" face a troubled world unless changes get made.
He said Kander would fight against the status quo if elected to the Senate.