Washington
In a major upset, Republican lawmakers on Thursday chose Rep. John A. Boehner, of Ohio, to be the new majority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives.
By a vote of 122 to 109, Mr. Boehner defeated Rep. Roy D. Blunt, of Missouri, who has been acting as majority leader since late September, when Rep. Tom DeLay, of Texas, stepped down from the post after being indicted by a state grand jury on a conspiracy charge.
As part of his campaign for the leadership post, Mr. Boehner, who has been the top policy maker on higher-education issues in the House, promised a fresh start for a party that has been racked by lobbying scandals.
Mr. Boehner has vowed to reform earmarking, a practice in which lawmakers provide noncompetitive grants to specific constituents, including colleges (The Chronicle, February 2). The congressman says that he has never tried to get an earmark directed to his Congressional district and that he has voted against the federal transportation bill every time it has been renewed since he was first elected to Congress, in 1990, because the measure is a magnet for lawmakers’ pet projects (The Chronicle, September 2, 2005).
Mr. Boehner has not said exactly how he would change the practice, but he has been outspoken in his distaste for it. “I told my constituents in 1990 that if they thought that my job was to rob the federal treasury on their behalf, then they were voting for the wrong guy,” he said in an interview with The Cincinnati Enquirer in January.
Still, critics of Mr. Boehner, including some of his Republican colleagues, scoff at the congressman’s portrayal of himself as the reform candidate. He has been an aggressive fund raiser and has used his political-action committee, known as the Freedom Project, to spread money to other lawmakers in order to build up loyalty among his colleagues and his stature within the party.
Mr. Boehner has also come under criticism for his links to lobbyists, including those representing student-loan providers such as Sallie Mae. As the chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, he has shepherded through Congress student-aid legislation that would affect the companies’ bottom line (The Chronicle, January 27).
According to Federal Election Commission records, officials in the student-loan industry contributed about $259,000, both individually and through political-action committees, to Mr. Boehner during the 2003-4 election cycle -- a time when he was drafting legislation to reauthorize, or extend, the Higher Education Act, the law that governs most federal student-aid programs. Of that amount, about 40 percent -- more than $100,000 -- came from officials with Sallie Mae.
Mr. Boehner has also been a top recipient of campaign donations from representatives from for-profit higher-education companies and colleges. They provided, both individually and through political-action committees, about $125,000 to the congressman, according to FEC records. The top donor in that group was Corinthian Colleges, one of the largest publicly traded higher-education companies, whose leaders contributed about $26,000 to Mr. Boehner in 2003-4.
As the leader of the House education committee, Mr. Boehner has championed proposals to loosen government regulations on proprietary colleges (The Chronicle, July 30, 2004).
Aides to Mr. Boehner have said that the congressman is a man of strong convictions and that he is not influenced by the campaign dollars he receives. Mr. Boehner has been a longtime supporter of for-profit colleges, which provide an education to many low-income and minority students who, he believes, are largely ignored by traditional colleges.
He has also long favored the guaranteed-loan program, in which private lenders provide government-backed loans to students, over the rival direct-lending program -- championed by the Clinton administration and opposed by Sallie Mae and other private lenders -- in which the U.S. Education Department provides loans directly to students through their colleges.
Mr. Boehner’s aides chafe at suggestions that they have acted at the behest of Sallie Mae or any other student-loan provider. They point out that he drafted legislation that would cut lender subsidies as part of a broader measure, which the House gave final approval to on Wednesday, that aims to reduce the federal budget deficit (The Chronicle, February 2).
But, largely as a result of Mr. Boehner’s maneuvering, the final bill (S 1932) was not as tough as an earlier version that had narrowly passed the House in November. And he helped insert language into the legislation that could deal a serious blow to the direct-loan program, by making it easier for Congressional appropriators to reduce its administrative budget.
Lobbyists for traditional colleges, who have not always seen eye to eye with Mr. Boehner, struck a conciliatory tone on Thursday, saying they were happy to see someone who was so familiar with their issues win such a powerful position.
“The higher-education community has always valued your willingness to listen to all sides of an issue and to shape those sometimes contradictory views into effective public policy,” David Ward, president of the American Council on Education, wrote in a letter to Mr. Boehner after the vote was announced.
Mr. Boehner won the race in the second round of voting on Thursday. In the first round, Representative Blunt came within seven votes of victory. Mr. Blunt received 110 votes, with 79 going to Mr. Boehner, and 40 to Rep. John Shadegg, an Arizona Republican. Mr. Shadegg dropped out before the second round, and his backers threw their support behind Mr. Boehner.
Rep. Howard P. (Buck) McKeon, a California Republican, is the leading candidate to replace Mr. Boehner as the chairman of the House education committee. Legislation to reauthorize the Higher Education Act is still pending before that panel.
Background articles from The Chronicle: