John Boehner (BAY-ner), elected to represent the 8th Congressional District of Ohio for a 10th term in November 2008, is a national leader in the fight for a smaller, more accountable government. Throughout his time as a small businessman, state legislator, and Member of Congress, John has been a straight-shooting and relentless advocate for freedom and security.
As House Republican Leader and a staunch opponent of pork-barrel politics, John is fighting to eliminate wasteful spending, create jobs, and balance the federal budget without raising taxes. He has challenged Republicans in the 111th Congress to be not just the party of “opposition,” but the party of better solutions to the challenges facing the American people. Under the new House GOP leadership team John leads, House Republicans have formed “solutions groups” to develop principled alternatives on the issues that matter most to American families and small businesses, and launched the GOP State Solutions project, an initiative aimed at bringing reform-minded Republicans at the state and federal levels together to promote common-sense solutions from outside the Beltway.
Born in Cincinnati in November 1949 as one of 12 brothers and sisters, John has lived in Southwest Ohio his entire life. He and his wife Debbie have been married for 35 years. They have two daughters – Lindsay and Tricia – and live in the northern Cincinnati suburb of West Chester. After graduating from Cincinnati’s Moeller High School in 1968, John earned a bachelor’s degree in business from Xavier University in Cincinnati in 1977.
Upon his graduation, he accepted a position with Nucite Sales, a small sales business in the packaging and plastics industry, and eventually became president of the firm. While working in the private sector, John entered the political arena – first serving as Union Township trustee from 1982 to 1984 and then as a representative to the Ohio state legislature from 1984 to 1990.
John’s first two terms in the U.S. House were marked by an aggressive campaign to clean up Congress and make it more accountable to the American people. During his freshman year, Boehner and fellow members of the reform-minded “Gang of Seven" took on the House establishment and successfully closed the House Bank, uncovered "dine-and-dash" practices at the House Restaurant, and exposed drug sales and cozy cash-for-stamps deals at the House Post Office. John also adopted a personal “no earmarks” policy upon taking office in 1991, a no-pork policy he maintains to this day.
Later, John was instrumental in crafting the Contract with America, the bold 100-day agenda for the 104th Congress that nationalized the 1994 elections. One of the Contract's cornerstones - the Congressional Accountability Act, requiring Congress to live under the same rules and regulations as the rest of the nation - bears the unmistakable imprint of his drive to reform the House. The success of John's reform-minded agenda earned him election to the House leadership after the GOP election victories in 1994. As House GOP Conference Chairman in the 104th and 105th Congress, John was a powerful voice in the fight to force Washington to stick to the strict spending limits in the Balanced Budget Act. In September 1999, as Vice-Chairman of the House Administration Committee, John joined House leaders to announce the first-ever "clean" independent audit of the House, a reform he first called for as a member of the Gang of Seven in 1992.
John has also long been a leader on education reform. In 1994, working with Rep. Dick Armey (R-TX), he secured passage of legislation allowing school districts to use their Title I funds for public school choice programs, under which parents could choose which public school their children would attend. Later, as chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, he co-wrote the bill establishing the first private school choice program in the District of Columbia, and worked with Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) to ensure parental choice provisions were included in the bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act to reinforce its goal of bringing greater accountability to taxpayer-funded education programs.
In 2006, Boehner authored the Pension Protection Act, the most sweeping reform of America's pension laws in more than 30 years, which the St. Louis Post-Dispatch said “will make it possible for millions of Americans to save more now for a better future.”
On November 19, 2008, Boehner was elected by his colleagues to serve a second term as House Republican Leader. Boehner believes Republicans can earn back the majority in Congress by renewing their commitment to enduring GOP principles of freedom, security, and smaller government, and developing better solutions to the challenges facing the American people.
