John A Boehner

In choosing Rep. John A. Boehner of Ohio as the new House majority leader Thursday, Republicans sought to put a new face on a party reeling from scandals and worried about maintaining its congressional majority. In an upset, Boehner won a tense closed-door vote that went to a second ballot. Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, the acting majority leader, had been favored to win the election.

WASHINGTON - President Obama trimmed his demand for tax increases on the wealthy Monday, making a substantial counteroffer as he and House Speaker John A. Boehner reconvened privately at the White House. Crucial differences remain, but the quickened pace of the budget talks suggested the men are engaged in a serious effort to bridge the partisan divide before the holidays - and before the year-end "fiscal cliff" leads to economically dire tax increases and spending cuts. The president offered to raise tax rates on household income above $400,000, according to a source familiar with the talks who was not authorized to speak publicly about them.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to free Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) from having to pay damages to House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) for letting reporters hear an illegally recorded 1996 phone call among House Republicans. Without comment, the justices let stand an appeals court ruling that the Constitution's free-speech guarantee doesn't shield McDermott from Boehner's lawsuit. A judge ordered McDermott to pay Boehner $60,000 in damages plus legal fees and costs.

Hopes for a sweeping budget deal to increase the federal debt limit unraveled when House Speaker John A. Boehner abruptly withdrew from talks, provoking a furious response from President Obama, who summoned political leaders for an emergency meeting. "We have now run out of time," Obama said, demanding that the Democratic and Republican leaders of Congress convene for a White House meeting at 11 a.m. Saturday to explain what they will do to avoid default. Boehner, who has been under enormous pressure from the conservatives in the House Republican majority, blamed the breakdown on Obama's insistence that any deal include new revenues as well as spending cuts.

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) violated federal law by turning over an illegally taped telephone call to reporters nearly a decade ago. In a 2-1 opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a lower court ruling that McDermott violated the rights of Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who was heard on the 1996 call involving then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).

A key Republican House leader said Sunday that if President Bush's current strategy in Iraq is not working by fall, members of Congress will demand to know what the White House's next plan is. Rep. John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House minority leader, said the troop buildup had shown some success and noted that it was not yet complete. But he embraced the idea of setting benchmarks for the Iraqi government and requiring Bush to assess the Iraqis' progress on a monthly basis.

New House Majority Leader John A. Boehner, who himself has been criticized for cozying up to Washington lobbyists, said Sunday that the public should know more about how lawmakers interacted with the lobbying industry, but he also stressed that politicians should not automatically stop taking trips paid for by special-interest groups. The Ohio Republican was making his first television appearances on the Sunday political talk shows since House Republicans chose him Thursday to succeed Rep.

Rep. John A. Boehner, with his ever-present cigarette, seems like a throwback to the days of Capitol Hill's smoke-filled rooms. He is hip-deep in political contributions from an industry he oversees. He was once scolded for passing out campaign checks from tobacco interests on the House floor. He was booted from a leadership post eight years ago.

Distancing himself from Republicans on housing issues, President Obama pitched a $5-billion to $10-billion plan to help a key segment of struggling homeowners — those still making monthly payments, but on underwater mortgages. Obama proposed Wednesday to help about 3.5 million people with good credit who are unable to refinance at historically low rates because their homes are worth less than their mortgages. He argued that those homeowners — and the country — couldn't afford to let the housing market bottom out, as many Republicans, including presidential candidate Mitt Romney, have advocated.

President Obama won't release his proposed budget for 2014 until Wednesday, but liberals and AARP have been howling all week about something they expect to be in it. What has our president done to provoke such outrage among his supporters? He's chained CPI. In an attempt to meet Republicans halfway in the battle over taxes and spending, Obama has offered to change the formula for calculating Social Security's annual cost-of-living increase - an "entitlement reform" GOP leaders have long asked for. The result would not change current Social Security benefits, but it would reduce future raises by an estimated three-tenths of 1% in the first year, or about $42 for the average beneficiary.

In a presidency full of firsts, Barack Obama racked up another one: first sitting president to tweet from the White House. Obama strode to a laptop set up in the East Room on Wednesday, splayed his fingers in classic touch-type position and tweeted out a question: "In order to reduce the deficit, what costs would you cut and what investments would you keep? BO. " With that, the first Twitter town hall was underway. Obama sat on a high stool, his back to the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington, and fielded questions submitted via the trendiest of social media tools.

Congressional leaders will converge on the White House for Thursday's summit on deficit reduction, but the burden for advancing the talks and averting a fiscal crisis increasingly has fallen on two key negotiators: President Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner. As a deadline nears, top aides for Obama and Boehner have privately been exchanging views about budget proposals, a sign of efforts underway to work through key issues that have separated the two sides for more than two months.

President Obama was safely back in Washington after his slightly shortened trip to Latin America, preparing on Thursday to deal with questions about his policy on Libya, which is under attack from several, sometimes contradictory angles. It was Sarah Palin, freshly back from his her own globe-trotting, who captured the mood of one stream of the Republican opposition to Obama’s military intervention in Libya. “I would like to see, of course, as long as we're in it -- we better be in it to win it,” Palin, a Fox News contributor, told Fox host Greta Van Susteren.

House Speaker John A. Boehner brought the Republican-led House into the gay marriage debate Friday by announcing plans to initiate a legal defense of the 1996 law that bars the federal government from giving legal rights or federal benefits to gay couples. Boehner, an Ohio Republican, seized on the opportunity to take up a social issue after the Obama administration announced last week that its Justice Department would no longer defend the law. The administration concluded that the law, known as the Defense of Marriage Act, was unconstitutional.

President Obama, acknowledging what appears to be a resounding Republican victory, made a midnight phone call to the man who is set to lead the opposition party as speaker of the House, John A. Boehner. The call was made from the president's Treaty Room office. According to the White House, Obama also called the current Democratic House leadership ? including Nancy Pelosi, whose four-year run as speaker will end in January ? and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, whose party will remain in the minority in that chamber.

With his party set to lose one, if not both houses of Congress Tuesday, President Obama used his weekly address to look beyond the midterm elections, saying he hopes to work with Republicans to address the nation's ongoing economic challenges. But in a parting political shot, he signaled out Republican leadership who he said have promised nothing but more "heated rhetoric. " "It comes down to a simple choice," he said. "We can spend the next two years arguing with one another, trapped in stale debates, mired in gridlock, unable to make progress.

WASHINGTON - With an overwhelming vote, the Senate on Tuesday launched debate on an ambitious overhaul of the nation's immigration laws, as Republicans, most of whom have not yet embraced the effort, declined to stand in the way of bringing it to the floor. But continuing doubts within the GOP about some of the bill's central elements, particularly on border security, could doom the effort. Republicans in the Senate and House want tighter control of the border with Mexico before the estimated 11 million people who entered the country illegally or overstayed their visas would be allowed to gain permanent legal status.

WASHINGTON - The House voted Tuesday to roll back income tax increases on the vast majority of Americans, finalizing a deal on the so-called fiscal cliff after weeks of gridlock. The approval, in a session that stretched late into the New Year's holiday, came after hours of closed-door debate among Republicans, with conservatives threatening to derail a bill that had overwhelmingly passed the Senate in the early hours of the morning. The final tally, 257 to 167, included support from 172 of the chamber's Democrats and just 85 of the majority Republicans, far fewer than half.

To the congressman who represents Gilroy -- the nation's self-proclaimed garlic capital -- Rep. John A. Boehner's declaration earlier this week that a government-run health insurance program would be about as popular as a garlic milkshake, well, it stinks. Democratic Rep. Michael M. Honda on Friday delivered a basket of the stinking rose to the Ohio Republican's Capitol office, while praising the health benefits of garlic and citing public support for a public alternative to private insurance.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to free Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) from having to pay damages to House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) for letting reporters hear an illegally recorded 1996 phone call among House Republicans. Without comment, the justices let stand an appeals court ruling that the Constitution's free-speech guarantee doesn't shield McDermott from Boehner's lawsuit. A judge ordered McDermott to pay Boehner $60,000 in damages plus legal fees and costs.