Topeka ? Independent U.S. Senate candidate Greg Orman on Monday proposed term limits and ending pensions for members of Congress as he launched a bus tour of Kansas in a bid to unseat veteran Republican incumbent Pat Roberts.

Orman, co-founder of a Kansas City-area business capital and management services company, outlined a “congressional reform” plan that also includes eliminating political action committees controlled by congressional leaders and imposing a lifetime ban on lobbying by former lawmakers. Orman is making the plan the focus of his bus tour, scheduling 18 stops over eight days.

Roberts also began a “listening tour” of the state Monday and has promised to visit all 105 of the state’s counties. The 78-year-old senator is seeking his fourth, six-year term in the Nov. 4 general election, and his Democratic challenger is Chad Taylor, the Shawnee County district attorney.

Orman said he won’t accept a congressional pension if he’s elected and described his proposals as an effort to change a culture in the nation’s capital that encourages members of Congress to become career politicians.

“We’ve got a lot of incentives that, in my mind, encourage the wrong people to seek elective office,” Orman said during an interview. “We want to create an environment where Washington attracts people who are genuinely interested in public service and not self-service.”

Orman’s tour schedule also included public service events, including helping at food and clothing banks in Lawrence and Topeka. He has never held elective office but ran for the U.S. Senate briefly in 2007 as a Democrat.

Both Orman and Taylor are promising to serve only two terms in the Senate if elected; both are in their 40s, pitch themselves as centrists and argue that many voters are frustrated with Washington.

Roberts, who emerged from a bruising primary race with tea party challenger Milton Wolf, a Leawood radiologist, launched his fall campaign last week by appealing to Republican voters who want to stymie President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats by electing a GOP majority in the Senate. Leroy Towns, Roberts’ executive campaign manager, said the senator’s “first reform” would be to “dump Harry Reid,” the Nevada Democrat and U.S. Senate majority leader.

As for Orman’s plan, Towns said in an email, “It’s a stale proposal to deflect from the fact that Greg Orman can’t say he’s willing to stop Obama in his tracks at every turn.”

Taylor’s campaign manager Brandon Naylor said the Democrat welcomes reforms in congressional pensions and campaign finance laws, but said formal term limits would “artificially” restrict voters’ choices. Orman is proposing an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to limit members of Congress to 12 years in the House and 12 years in the Senate.

“Mr. Orman’s plan is made to look good on paper, but treats the symptoms and not the disease of Washington, D.C.,” Naylor said, also in an email. “If we want new leadership, it comes down to voting out those that have overstayed their welcome.”