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John Boehner

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John Boehner
21st Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives
Incumbent
Assumed office
January 4, 2007
DeputyRoy Blunt
Eric Cantor
Preceded byNancy Pelosi
Succeeded byNancy Pelosi
25th Majority Leader of the United States House of Representatives
In office
February 2, 2006 – January 3, 2007
DeputyRoy Blunt
Preceded byRoy Blunt (Acting)
Succeeded bySteny Hoyer
Chairman of the House Committee on Education and Workforce
In office
January 3, 2001 – January 3, 2006
Preceded byWilliam Goodling
Succeeded byHoward McKeon
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Ohio's 8th district
Incumbent
Assumed office
January 3, 1991
Preceded byBuz Lukens
Member of the Ohio House of Representatives
from the 57th district
In office
January 3, 1985 – December 31, 1990
Preceded byBill Donham
Succeeded byScott Nein
Personal details
Born (1949-11-17) November 17, 1949 (age 74)
Reading, Ohio
Political partyRepublican
SpouseDeborah Gunlack (1973–present)
ChildrenLindsay Boehner
Tricia Boehner
ResidenceWest Chester
Alma materXavier University
ProfessionBusiness consultant
Military service
Branch/serviceUnited States Navy
Years of service1968 (8 weeks, honorably discharged)

John Andrew Boehner (Template:Pron-en BAY-nər;[notes 1] born November 17, 1949) is the U.S. Representative from Ohio's 8th congressional district, serving since 1991, and the Republican House Minority Leader since 2007. The district includes several rural and suburban areas near Cincinnati and Dayton and a small portion of Dayton itself.

Following the 2010 midterm elections, with the Republicans becoming the majority party in the House of Representatives, Boehner is expected to be elected Speaker of the House of Representatives once the 112th Congress takes office on January 3, 2011.[1]

Early life, education and career

Boehner was born in Reading, Ohio, the son of Mary Anne (née Hall) and Earl Henry Boehner, the second of twelve children in a German-Irish family.[2] He grew up in modest circumstances, having shared one bathroom with his eleven siblings in a two-bedroom house in Cincinnati. His parents slept on a pull-out couch.[3] He started working at his family's bar at age 8, a business founded by their grandfather Andy Boehner in 1938.[3] He has lived in Southwest Ohio his entire life. All but two of his siblings still live within a few miles of each other, two are unemployed and most of the others have blue-collar jobs.[4]

He graduated from Cincinnati Moeller High School in 1968, when U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was at its peak. Boehner enlisted in the United States Navy but was discharged honorably after eight weeks, because of a bad back .[5] He earned his bachelor's degree in business from Xavier University in Cincinnati in 1977, becoming the first person in his family to attend college, taking seven years as he held several jobs to pay for his education.[3]

Shortly after his graduation in 1977, Boehner accepted a position with Nucite Sales, a small sales business in the packaging and plastics industry. He was steadily promoted and eventually became president of the firm, resigning in 1990 when he was elected to Congress.[6]

Early political career

From 1982 to 1984, Boehner served on the board of trustees of Union Township, Butler County, Ohio. He then served as an Ohio state representative from 1985 to 1990.[citation needed]

U.S. House of Representatives

In 1990, Boehner ran against incumbent congressman Buz Lukens, who was under fire for having a sexual relationship with a minor. He trounced Lukens in the primary, taking 49 percent of the vote. This was tantamount to election in the heavily Republican 8th District. He has been reelected 10 times with no substantive opposition, and even ran unopposed in 1994.

Gang of Seven

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.[citation needed]

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 which is the party caucus for Republicans in the United States House of Representatives. In this post, he was the fourth-ranking House Republican, behind Gingrich, Majority Leader Dick Armey and Majority Whip Tom DeLay. There he championed the Freedom to Farm Act that, among other provisions, revises and simplifies direct payment programs for crops and eliminates milk price supports through direct government purchases.

Following the election of President George W. Bush, Boehner was elected as chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee from 2001 until 2006. There he authored several reforms including the Pension Protection Act and a successful school choice voucher program for low-income children in Washington, DC.[7] He was also a major force in the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, saying it was his “proudest achievement” in two decades of public service.[8]

Congressional leadership

In 1998, Boehner was ousted as the chairman of the House Republican Conference, after his party lost five congressional seats.[9]

In an upset, Boehner was elected by his colleagues to serve as House Majority Leader on February 2, 2006. 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 as the first count showed one more vote cast than Republicans present,[10] due to a misunderstanding as to whether the rules allowed Resident Commissioner Luis Fortuño of Puerto Rico to vote or not.[11])

After the Republicans lost control of the House in the 2006 elections, the House Republican Conference chose Boehner as Minority Leader. While as Majority Leader he was second-in-command behind Hastert, as Minority Leader he was the leader of the House Republicans. According to the 2008 Congress.org Power Ranking, Boehner is the 6th most powerful congressman (preceded by Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Hoyer, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Sander M. Levin, Dean of the House John Dingell, and Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey, all Democrats) and the most powerful Republican.[12] As Minority Leader, Boehner serves as an ex officio member of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Speaker of the House

On November 17, 2010, Boehner was unanimously chosen by the House Republicans as their nominee for Speaker.[13] While the Speakership won't be up for election by the full House until January 2011 when the new Congress convenes, in practice the Speaker almost always comes from the majority party.[14]

If Boehner becomes Speaker as expected, he will still be leader of the House Republicans. However, the Speaker normally does not take part in debate (though he has the right to do so) and almost never votes from the floor.

Controversies

Connections to lobbyists

In June 1995, Boehner distributed campaign contributions from tobacco industry lobbyists on the House floor as House members were weighing how to vote on tobacco subsidies.[15] In a 1996 documentary by PBS called The People and the Power Game, Boehner said "They asked me to give out a half dozen checks quickly before we got to the end of the month and I complied. And I did it on the House floor, which I regret. I should not have done. It's not a violation of the House rules, but it's a practice that‘s gone on here for a long time that we're trying to stop and I know I'll never do it again."[16] Boehner eventually led the effort to change House rules and prohibit campaign contributions from being distributed on the House floor.[17]

A September 2010 New York Times story said Boehner was "tightly linked" to lobbyists.[18]

Smithsonian Censorship

On November 30, 2010 House Speaker-designate John Boehner, along with Majority Leader Eric Cantor, called for the dismantling of an exhibit in the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery after he learned that it contained video by David Wojnarowicz, A Fire in My Belly, that contained an image of a crucifix with ants crawling on it. Boehner spokesman Kevin Smith said, “Smithsonian officials should either acknowledge the mistake and correct it, or be prepared to face tough scrutiny beginning in January when the new majority in the House moves [in].” He later clarified that Boehner wanted the exhibit “cancelled.” Washington Post columnist Blake Gopnik initiated reportage of the story.[19]

Sen. Boehner and the Catholic League (which instigated the censorship of Wojnarowicz's work) have relied on a fundamental mis-reading of Wojnarowicz's work, which was included in a show that patrons must freely enter and was largely privately funded. Sen. Boehner has requested the nullification of a business contract and the silencing of people with whom he disagrees. Many patrons are offended by Sen. Boehner's use of the government to intrude on the lives and speech of regular Americans.[20] The National Portrait Gallery Commissioner James T. Bartlett has resigned and several protesters were arrested for playing Wojnarowicz's video on their iPads in the gallery.[21]

The video was made as an elegy for the artist’s mentor and lover Peter Hujar and a comment on the AIDS epidemic, and was shown as part of an exhibition entitled Hide/Seek:Difference and Desire in American Portraiture. According to the Smithsonian press release, this was "the first major museum exhibition to focus on sexual difference in the making of modern American portraiture."[22][23]

Political positions

A profile in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review said, "On both sides of the aisle, Boehner earns praise for candor and an ability to listen."[24] The Cleveland Plain Dealer says Boehner "has perfected the art of disagreeing without being disagreeable."[25]

Boehner has been classified as a "hard-core conservative" by OnTheIssues.[26] Although Boehner does not like free speech, he does have a 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."[27]

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 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 Boehner voted in favor of the Troubled Asset Relief Program[28] 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 Barack Obama, including the "cap and trade" plan that Boehner says would hurt job growth in his congressional district and elsewhere. This is in spite of its origins as a Republican initiative.[29] He opposed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and said that, if Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 elections, they would do whatever it takes to stop the act. One option would be to defund the administrative aspect of the place, not paying "one dime" to pay the salaries of the workers who would administer the plan.[30] He also led an opposition to the 2009 stimulus and to Obama's first budget proposal, promoting instead an alternative economic recovery plan[31] and a Republican budget (authored by Ranking Rep. Paul Ryan, R-WI).[32] He has advocated for an across-the-board spending freeze, including entitlement programs.

Boehner favors making cuts in Social Security, such as by raising the retirement age to 70 for people who have at least 20 years until retirement, as well as tying cost-of-living increases to the consumer price index rather than wage inflation, and limiting payments to those who need them.[30]

Political campaigns

2006

See also: United States House of Representatives elections in Ohio, 2006 § District 8

In the November 2006 election, Boehner defeated the Democratic Party candidate, U.S. Air Force veteran Mort Meier, 64% to 36%.[33]

2008

See also: United States House of Representatives elections in Ohio, 2008 § District 8

In the November 2008 election, Boehner defeated Nicholas Von Stein, 68% to 32%.[34]

2010

See also: United States House of Representatives elections in Ohio, 2010 § District 8

Boehner was opposed by Democratic nominee Justin Coussoule, Constitution Party nominee Jim Condit, and Libertarian nominee David Harlow; but won the 2010 election.[35]

As Republican House Leader, Boehner is a Democratic target for criticism of Republican views and political positions. In July 2010, President Barack Obama began singling out Boehner for criticism during his speeches.[36] In one speech, Obama mentioned Boehner by name nine times[37] and accused him of believing that police, firefighters, and teachers were jobs "not worth saving."[38]

Personal life

Boehner and his wife Debbie were married in 1973. They live in the Wetherington section of West Chester Township. They have two daughters, Lindsay and Tricia.[39]

Notes

  1. ^ The original German pronunciation of the name Boehner/Böhner is [ˈbøːnɐ̯]. However, Boehner's biography at House.gov recommends the pronunciation BAY-ner.

References

  1. ^ "Republicans take U.S. House". CBC News. November 2, 2010.
  2. ^ Harnden, Toby. "John Boehner: the second of twelve kids". London: Telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 2010-09-14.
  3. ^ a b c Banikarim, Susie; Francis, Enjoli (November 3, 2010). "'American Dream': John Boehner Set to Take House Helm". ABC News.
  4. ^ [1]
  5. ^ "Cincinnati Enquirer". Enquirer.com. Retrieved 2010-06-14.
  6. ^ "John Boehner - 8th District of Ohio". U.S. House of Representatives. Retrieved 2009-07-13.
  7. ^ George F. Will (2003-09-14). "Today's principle civil rights fight - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review". Pittsburghlive.com. Retrieved 2010-08-23.
  8. ^ Rudalevige, Andrew (June 10–11, 2002). "Accountability and Avoidance in the Bush Education Plan: The 'No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.'" (PDF). “Taking Account of Accountability” Conference, Program on Education Policy and Governance. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. {{cite conference}}: Unknown parameter |booktitle= ignored (|book-title= suggested) (help)
  9. ^ Weisman, Jonathan (02-03-2006). "In an Upset, Boehner Is Elected House GOP Leader". Washington: washingtonpost.com. Retrieved 2010-11-04. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  10. ^ Roll Call[dead link]
  11. ^ "CNN". Edition.cnn.com. 2006-02-02. Retrieved 2010-06-14.
  12. ^ http://www.congress.org/congressorg/power_rankings/overall.tt
  13. ^ "Boehner: New Leadership "Reflects a New Majority Ready to Listen and Go to Work". Office of the House Republican Leader. Retrieved 2010-11-19. {{cite web}}: Text "date2010-11-17" ignored (help)
  14. ^ "Boehner favored as 61st House Speaker on his 61st birthday". TheHill.com. 2010-11-17. Retrieved 2010-11-17.
  15. ^ Dana Milbank (2006-02-03). "Boehner Makes His Political Comeback". Washington Post. Retrieved 2010-11-22.
  16. ^ 'The Rachel Maddow Show' (transcript), Thursday, September 30, 2010 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  17. ^ See House Rule IV 7 at rules.house.gov.
  18. ^ Lipton, Eric (September 11, 2010). "A G.O.P. Leader Tightly Bound to Lobbyists". New York Times.
  19. ^ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/30/AR2010113006801.html
  20. ^ http://www.baycitizen.org/visual-art/story/outcry-over-smithsonian-censorship-grows/
  21. ^ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cat-weaver/national-portrait-gallery_b_795600.html
  22. ^ http://blogs.artinfo.com/modernartnotes/page/2/
  23. ^ http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/exhhide.html
  24. ^ Salena Zito (May 10, 2009). "Boehner's job: Recapture 'squandered' GOP brand". Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Retrieved June 3, 2009.
  25. ^ Sabrina Eaton (March 8, 2009). "House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio helps unite GOP". Cleveland Plain Dealer. Retrieved June 3, 2009.
  26. ^ "John Boehner on the Issues". Issues2000.org. Retrieved 2010-06-14.
  27. ^ Weisman, Jonathan (February 12, 2006). "Washington Post". Washington Post. Retrieved 2010-06-14.
  28. ^ http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2008/roll681.xml
  29. ^ http://politifact.com/ohio/statements/2010/sep/13/john-boccieri/democratic-rep-john-boccieri-invokes-gop-sen-john-/
  30. ^ a b Wereschagin, Mike; Zito, Salena (June 29, 2010), "Obama's good for GOP, Boehner says", Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, retrieved 2010-09-12
  31. ^ "House GOP Economic Recovery Alternative Will Create 6.2 Million New American Jobs | Republican Leader John Boehner". Republicanleader.house.gov. Retrieved 2010-06-14.
  32. ^ "Budget Committee Republicans, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C". House.gov. 2009-01-04. Retrieved 2010-06-14.
  33. ^ "State Races: Ohio 2006 Elections". CNN. November 2006. Retrieved 2006-03-16.
  34. ^ "State Election Results". CNN. 12 January 2009. Retrieved 22 November 2010.
  35. ^ Official candidate list, Ohio Secretary of State
  36. ^ Yunji de Nies and Sunlen Miller (7/30/10) [2] ABC News
  37. ^ Toby Harnden (9/17/10) John Boehner: the second of 12 kids from Ohio who is Barack Obama's elitist target The Daily Telegrah
  38. ^ Frank James (9/12/10) Obama Takes Boehner On By Name; Shades Of Clinton-Gingrich NPR
  39. ^ James Rowley (28 October 2010). "Boehner's Blue-Collar Roots Frame Possible Next Speaker's Views". Business Week. New York, NY: Bloomberg L.P. Retrieved 22 November 2010.

Further reading

  • 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.
U.S. House of Representatives
Preceded by Member of the House of Representatives
from Ohio's 8th congressional district
1991–present 		Incumbent
Preceded by Chairperson of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce
2001–2006 		Succeeded by
Party political offices
Preceded by Chairperson of the House Republican Conference
1995–1999 		Succeeded by
Preceded by
Roy Blunt
Acting
 Majority Leader of the House of Representatives
2006–2007 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Minority Leader of the House of Representatives
2007–present 		Succeeded by
Incumbent
U.S. order of precedence (ceremonial)
Preceded by Representatives of the United States by seniority
66th 		Succeeded by

Template:Persondata

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