Federal spending in spotlight in GOP Senate runoff

Both Jack Kingston and David Perdue tell voters they are fiscal hawks intent on taming the federal budget deficit. But their sincerity and track records on the budget have been sharply debated and form the central issue of the July 22 Republican runoff for the U.S. Senate.

It’s fitting, given that Kingston has devoted his 22-year U.S. House career to the money-disbursing Appropriations Committee, while Perdue has tangled with corporate balance sheets as an executive and says the soaring debt motivated him to run for office for the first time.

Kingston boasts that he has done the nitty-gritty of cutting budgets in Congress in recent years, but he also voted for increased spending when Republicans controlled Congress and the White House in the mid-2000s.