John Andrew Boehner ( , ; born November 17, 1949)
is a
conservative
Republican American politician who is currently
serving as the
House
Minority Leader in the 111th Congress. He serves as a
U.S. Representative from ,
which includes several rural and suburban areas near Cincinnati
and Dayton
and a small
portion of Dayton itself.
Background and personal life
John Boehner was born in Cincinnati to Mary Anne (Hall) and Earl
Henry Boehner as one of 12 brothers and sisters. He has lived in
Southwest Ohio his entire life.
He graduated from Cincinnati's Moeller High
School
in 1968, when US involvement in the Vietnam War was at its peak. Boehner
enlisted in the
United States
Navy, but was honorably discharged after eight weeks for
medical reasons (bad back).
He earned his bachelor's degree in business from
Xavier
University in Cincinnati
in 1977. He subsequently accepted a position
with Nucite Sales, a small sales business in the packaging and
plastics industry, where he eventually became president of the
firm.
Family
He and his wife Debbie have been married since 1973.
They live in the
Wetherington
section of West Chester Township
. They have two daughters, Lindsay and
Tricia.
Political career
In 1981
Boehner served on the board of trustees of Union Township,
Butler County, Ohio
. Boehner then served as an
Ohio state representative from
1985 to 1990.
Gang of Seven
In 1990, Boehner was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives
in the
102nd Congress.
During his freshman year, Boehner and fellow members of the
Gang of Seven took on the House
establishment, Republicans and Democrats alike, and successfully
closed the House Bank (
House
banking scandal), uncovered "dine-and-dash" practices at the
House Restaurant, and exposed drug sales and illegal
cash-for-stamps deals at the House Post Office.
Name pronunciation
During his run for the U.S. House of Representatives, his campaign
collateral read; "John Boehner (say-BO-NER)". During most of his
life and political career his last name has been improperly
pronounced. His campaign managers sought to correct this common
mis-pronunciation of his name by using
phonetics on his campaign material.
Contract With America
Boehner, along with
Newt Gingrich and
several other Republican lawmakers, was one of the engineers of the
Contract with America in 1994
that helped catapult Republicans into the majority in Congress for
the first time in four decades.
Legislative accomplishments
From 1995 to 1999, Boehner served as
House Republican Conference Chairman. There he championed the
Freedom
to Farm Act and a series of balanced budgets that, when Bill
Clinton was president, helped lead to the first federal surplus in
a generation.
Following the election of President George W. Bush, Boehner was
chosen by his colleagues to serve as chairman of the
House
Education and the Workforce Committee from 2001 until 2006.
There he authored several landmark reforms including the
Pension Protection Act and a successful school choice
program for low-income children in Washington, DC. He was also a
major force to the passage of
No
Child Left Behind, saying it was his “proudestachievement” in
two decades of congressional service.
Congressional leadership
Boehner was elected by his colleagues to serve as House Majority
Leader on February 2, 2006, after one of the most open and public
House leadership races in American political history. The election
followed
Tom DeLay's resignation from the
post after being indicted on criminal charges.
Boehner campaigned as a reform candidate who wanted to reform the
so-called "earmark" process and rein in government spending.
He
defeated Majority Whip Roy Blunt of
Missouri
and
Representative John Shadegg of Arizona
, even though
he was considered an underdog candidate to Blunt. In the
second round of voting by the House Republican Conference, Boehner
received 122 votes compared to 109 for Blunt. Blunt kept his
previous position as
Majority Whip,
the No. 3 leadership position in the House. There was some
confusion on the first ballot for Majority Leader. The first count
showed one more vote cast than Republicans present, which turned
out to be due to a misunderstanding as to whether the rules allowed
Resident Commissioner
Luis Fortuño
of Puerto Rico to vote or not.
After the Republicans lost control of the House in the 2006
elections, Boehner was elected House Minority Leader by the
Republican Conference. As House Majority Leader, he was
second-in-command in the House Republican Conference behind
Speaker
Dennis Hastert, but in his current
position as Minority Leader he is the highest ranking Republican in
the House. According to the 2008 Congress.org Power Ranking,
Minority Leader Boehner is the 6th most powerful congressman
(preceded by Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Hoyer, Ways and Means
Committee Chairman
Charles Rangel,
Dean of the House
John Dingell, and
Appropriations Committee Chairman
Dave
Obey, all Democrats) and the most powerful Republican. As
Minority Leader, Boehner serves as an
ex officio member of
the
Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence.
Congressional record
John Boehner playing golf, 2009
A profile in the
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
said, "On both sides of the aisle, Boehner earns praise for candor
and an ability to listen." And the
Cleveland Plain Dealer says
Boehner "has perfected the art of disagreeing without being
disagreeable."
John Boehner has been classified as a "hard-core conservative" by
OnTheIssues. Although Boehner has a
strong reputation and conservative voting record, when he was
running for House leadership, religious conservatives in the GOP
expressed that they were not satisfied with his positions.
According to the
Washington Post: "From illegal
immigration to sanctions on China to an overhaul of the pension
system, Boehner, as chairman of the House Committee on Education
and the Workforce, took ardently pro-business positions that were
contrary to those of many in his party. Religious conservatives —
examining his voting record — see him as a policymaker driven by
small-government economic concerns, not theirs.
On May 25, 2006, Boehner issued a statement defending his agenda
and attacking his "
Democrat
friends" such as Minority Leader
Nancy
Pelosi. Boehner said regarding national security that voters
"have a choice between a Republican Party that understands the
stakes and is dedicated to victory, and a Democrat [sic] Party with
a non-existent national security policy that sheepishly dismisses
the challenges of a post-9/11 world and is all too willing to
concede defeat on the battlefield in Iraq."
On October 3, 2008 Rep. Boehner voted in favor of the
Troubled Asset Relief Program
believing that
the enumerated
powers grant congress the authority to "purchase assets and
equity from financial institutions in order to strengthen its
financial sector."
Boehner has been highly critical of several recent initiatives by
the Democratic Congress and President Obama, including the "cap and
trade" plan that Boehner says would hurt job growth in his
congressional district and elsewhere. He also led an opposition to
the trillion-dollar stimulus and to the President's budget
proposal, promoting instead an alternative economic recovery plan
and a Republican budget (authored by Ranking Rep. Paul Ryan,
R-Wisc.). He has advocated for an across-the-board
spending freeze, including
entitlements.
Political controversies
Connections to lobbyists
In June 1995, Boehner provoked contentions of unethical conduct
when he distributed campaign contributions from
tobacco industry lobbyists on the House floor as House members were
weighing how to vote on tobacco subsidies. Boehner eventually led
the effort to change House rules and prohibit campaign
contributions from being distributed on the House floor.
Boehner's PAC raised $31,500 from four Indian tribes who at one
time were loosely associated with lobbyist
Jack Abramoff, who was the central figure in a
lobbying
scandal. Boehner had no connection to Abramoff, and both he and
spokesmen for the Indian tribes asserted that the contributions
were not related to Abramoff's lobbying.
In October 2004, Rose DiNapoli, a lobbyist for student loan giant
Sallie Mae, held a fundraiser in her
Arlington, Va., home for Boehner. At the dinner, 34 Sallie Mae
executives — including more than half the senior management team —
wrote checks for Boehner's political action committee. In December
2005, Boehner told non-profit lenders that he thought they would be
happy with the final results of the reauthorization of the
Higher Education Act. "Know that I have
all of you in my two trusted hands," he said, "I've got enough
rabbits up my sleeve to be able to get where we need to." Boehner
championed a bill making steep cuts to for-profit lender subsidies
in an effort to save more than $13 billion in the
Deficit
Reduction Act, though the final package "soften[ed] [proposed]
cuts to lenders" and "deal[t] a serious blow to the competing
direct-loan program." The direct-loan program gives students access
to loans from taxpayers, instead of through private lenders and
banks. Supporters of Direct Loans suggest "direct-lending program
costs taxpayers much less than extending loans through lenders like
Sallie Mae. But the Direct Loan "program has not provided savings
and is paying out more in interest payments — calculated at about
$16.5 billion — than it has received from borrowers since its
inception."
Financial Crisis
On September 18, 2008, Congressman Boehner attended a closed
meeting with congressional leaders, then-Treasury Secretary Henry
Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, and was urged to
craft legislation to help financially troubled banks. That same day
(trade effective the next day), Congressman Boehner cashed out of
an equity mutual fund.
Apartment rental
Boehner rents a two-bedroom Capitol Hill apartment for $1600 a
month. The apartment building is owned by a Washington lobbyist.
Boehner does not deny his close ties to
"K Street" lobbyists and says
that his relationships are ethical.
2006 Mark Foley scandal
Boehner told
The Washington
Post that he knew of "contact" between Foley and
Congressional pages in the spring, but was unaware of their nature
or content. Boehner maintains that he believes he informed Speaker
Dennis Hastert, and that Hastert
assured him it had been "taken care of." Boehner says that he was
unaware of Foley's e-mails and instant messages until the messages
were released to ABC News and other sources.
McDermott lawsuit
Boehner
was involved in a lawsuit, first filed in 1998, against fellow
Congressman Jim McDermott of Washington
. Boehner
v. McDermott centered on
the release by McDermott to the media of a taped conference call
between Boehner,
Newt Gingrich, and
other Republican Congressional leaders that had been illegally
recorded through a radio scanner and given to McDermott by a
Florida couple. The call was a discussion of strategy over an
investigation of Gingrich by the
House Ethics Committee. Gingrich had
publicly pledged not to organize opposition to the probe. The
Florida couple were later fined $500 for violating the federal
wiretapping law. McDermott was ordered to pay $60,000 to Boehner in
addition to attorney fees and costs, which may amount to $500,000
based on his violation of House Ethics rules.
Public option
Boeher claimed in October 2009 to have never met an
American citizen outside of
U.S. Congress and
Obama administration officials who
supported the
public
health insurance option being in the
America's
Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009. In response the
Progressive Change
Campaign Committee announced $10,000 in online advertising
targeting Boehner, a campaign asking folks to "invite" Boehner to
meet with
constituent who favor the
public option, and a video by a constituent who'd like to meet
him.
Re-election campaigns
In the
November 2006
election, Boehner easily defeated the Democratic Party
candidate,
U.S. Air Force veteran
Mort Meier, 64% to 36%. In the
November 2008 election,
Boehner defeated Nicholas Von Stein, 67.9% to 32.1%.
See also
Footnotes
References
- Barone, Michael, and Grant Ujifusa, The Almanac of American
Politics 2006: The Senators, the Representatives and the Governors:
Their Records and Election Results, Their States and Districts
(2005) pp 1328–32.
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