Republican congressional candidate Kim Schmett says third district incumbent Leonard Boswell, a Democrat, didn’t do enough to convince his fellow Democrats to stay in session and deal with flood relief.
"They just took off on a vacation for five weeks. They had votes to adjourn. Some of our Iowa congressmen fought that adjournment because it was a really bad time for us to adjourn here in Iowa. You know, we’ve had floods and congress hasn’t appropriated money for that flood relief," Schmett said.
"If they would have stayed one more day, we could have had a vote in to help all of those people." Schmett, chief of staff to former Iowa Congressman Greg Ganske, says Washington is broken. "Some people ask me, ‘Why, Kim, would you ever want to run for congress?’ he said. "And I guess I started thinking about the race several months ago and I’m really, really disappointed in what congress, not what they’re doing — actually what they aren’t doing."
Schmett says it’s time for congress to tackle major issues like Social Security and Medicare. "Everybody agrees that Social Security and Medicare have huge funding problems. We’re going to run out of money if we don’t do something, so what’s congress done the last two or three years on it? They’d talked a lot, but they’ve done absolutely nothing. Don’t you think we ought to be able to expect a little bit more out of our congressman on that?" Schmett says. "…If you want to change congress, you’ve got to change your congressman."
Schmett made his comments Monday afternoon at The Des Moines Register’s Soap Box on the Iowa State Fairgrounds.