Republican Matt Schultz has kicked off his congressional campaign by calling for term limits for members of the U.S. House and Senate.
“It’s been a situation where people get there and they spend 30, 40 years in the same office and they consolidate power and the special interests get into them,” Schultz said during an interview with Radio Iowa. “We need to make sure that we have a system in place that encourages new ideas, encourages more people to get involved and the only way to do that is with a constitutional amendment for term limits.”
Schultz proposes a 12-year limit on service and he promises, if elected, he’d adhere to that limit.
“I think that would allow people to go to congress, do their job and then go home and it would allow more ideas and break the gridlock,” Schultz said late this morning.
Schultz, who has been Iowa’s secretary of state for the past three years, is now seeking Iowa’s third district congressional seat after Republican Tom Latham abruptly announced he would not run for an 11th term in 2014. Schultz will be making his case for term limits in the same year Republican Congressman Steve King asks voters to send him to congress for a total of 14 years and two years before Chuck Grassley plans to run for a seventh term in the U.S. Senate.
Schultz is calling for the repeal of “ObamaCare” and for cuts in the federal budget.
“It’s really personal for me, having five kids and being married and seeing the country going the direction it’s going,” Schultz said. “…We cannot just keep spending and spending and spending. At some point, somebody’s got to say no.”
Schultz, who lives in Truro, held a news conference this morning in Council Bluffs, where he had served on the city county before his 2010 election to statewide office. He’s making campaign stops in Glenwood, Red Oak, Atlantic, Guthrie Center, Perry and Des Moines today as well. Schultz could face a Republican primary as state Senator Brad Zaun — the former Urbandale mayor who was an unsuccessful congressional candidate in 2010 — may run for congress again.
Iowa Democratic Party chair Scott Brennan issued a written statement calling Schultz a “Tea Party darling who has wasted tens of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars during his time as secretary of state” with voter fraud investigations.