John Boehner

John Andrew Boehner.Boehner was born in Reading, Ohio, the son of Mary Anne and Earl Henry Boehner, the second of twelve children in a German-Irish family. He grew up in modest circumstances, having shared one bathroom with his dozen siblings in a two-bedroom house in Cincinnati. His parents slept on a pull-out couch.He started working at his family's bar at age 8, a business founded by their grandfather Andy Boehner in 1938.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.

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 honorably discharged after eight weeks for medical reasons.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.
Boehner enjoys golfing and has a "taste for parties and fine wines".

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.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.

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. 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." Boehner eventually led the effort to change House rules and prohibit campaign contributions from being distributed on the House floor.

A September 2010 New York Times story said Boehner was "tightly linked" to lobbyists. In the 2009-2010 election cycle Boehner, in his capacity as minority leader, received roughly double the total dollar amount of donations from industry as did Democratic majority leader Nancy Pelosi

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." And the Cleveland Plain Dealer says Boehner "has perfected the art of disagreeing without being disagreeable."

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 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 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 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.He also led an opposition to President Obama's 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.

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.



2010

United States House of Representatives elections in Ohio, 2010#District  Boehner is opposed by Democratic nominee Justin Coussoule, Constitution Party nominee Jim Condit, and Libertarian nominee David Harlow in the 2010 election.

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.In one speech, Obama mentioned Boehner by name nine times and accused him of believing that police, firefighters, and teachers were jobs "not worth saving.

                                             

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