Today is Tuesday, January 4, 2011 and tomorrow will see a new Republican majority take control of 
the House of Representatives. Representative John Boehner of Ohio will be sworn in as the Speaker of the House and will be third in line of succession to be President of the United States. Much has already been said about Boehner and how he will differ in style from Nancy Pelosi, so much so that I thought it would be worth taking another look. Needless to say, there is much that is different between the outgoing and incoming speakers.
Pelosi ran a very tight ship, with one of her first acts as Speaker, after gaining a strong majority, was to change the rules of the House, thereby limiting the input of the minority party. Contrast that with Boehner, who is fairly laid back, except when he is on the floor of the House and giving one of his fiery speeches. His leadership will certainly be much different than Pelosi’s and even different than that of previous Republican speakers. One of the first votes the House will take up will be to change the rules back to Boehner’s liking, ie. giving the minority party more say in what comes and goes in the House.
As I was reading up on this topic this morning, I came across an article in the Wall Street Journal that profiles John Boehner and how he is likely to proceed. It’s worth looking into and while I am only using a small portion as a quote for this post, I would recommend you reading the entire article. It may give us all some insight on the man and how he operates.
When John Boehner takes over one of the most powerful jobs in Washington this week, he says his first order of business is to make himself less powerful.
On Wednesday the new speaker of the House of Representatives plans to offer a package of rule changes that, he says, will give minority-party members more of a say and decentralize power. In short, Ohio Republican Mr. Boehner is promising he’ll be a different figure from many speakers throughout history—from Republican Joseph Cannon a century ago to his immediate predecessor, Democrat Nancy Pelosi—who kept a tighter leash.
Speaking of changing the rules, here are a couple of the changes he is proposing and is likely to get, since he has more than enough votes for them to pass.
Lawmakers will be required to vote on whether or not to raise the federal debt ceiling, a move sought by tea-party representatives. Current rules let the House automatically raise the limit when they pass a budget.
All legislation must be posted online 72 hours before going to the House floor to prevent party leaders from changing bills the night before House votes, as has been the practice over the years.
Although these two rules are just a small portion of the changes John Boehner is proposing, I think they are important. I should note that he is also keeping the House ethics office put in place by the Democrats. If you look back at his history, you will find he is particularly hard on any ethics problems his caucus members might have. He seems to be very unrelenting about that issue, which may be a direct result of the ethically challenged members of the GOP we have had in the past.
Concerning how the new Speaker of the House will be running things, here is what he told reporters recently.
Mr. Boehner has promised to give more power to committee chairmen, and to put cameras in meetings of the powerful Rules Committee, which sets guidelines for congressional debate.
I’m going to run the House my way and work with members on both sides of the aisle to decide what should come to the floor and what shouldn’t come to the floor.
Here you see the biggest difference between Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner and here you will find some complaints about Boehner. In the comment section of the Wall Street Journal article, I found several people who were strongly lamenting the fact that Boehner was going to “empower the Democrats”. Obviously, we do not know how this is going to play out, but let’s at least give the man a chance. I am cautiously optimistic that we will see a totally different kind of House in the 112th Congress.