John Boehner: Thank you. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you. All right. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for that very nice introduction and let me say I’m really so proud to be here with all of you. I want to thank the CPAC organizers for all of the hard work they’ve put in to making this event a success and a growing success over the, over the last few decades.

You know when I spoke here a year ago as Cleta mentioned we were just a month into the Obama era. You know days earlier House Republicans had stood united and voted no on the president’s trillion-dollar stimulus plan. I was still taking the heat from Keith Oberman and others on the left and all because they didn’t like the fact that I threw the bill on the floor. You know they called it disrespectful. They said we were committing political suicide. They said it was the death mill for the Republican Party and the death mill for conservatives. Well as usual they were wrong. That moment didn’t, didn’t signal the death of the Republican Party. If anything, it was a rebirth. The start of a transformational process that’s still going on. It was the moment with Republicans started listening to the American people standing on principle and offering better solutions to the American people. You know the Democrats tried every trick in the book to try to get some of our members to vote yes on this crazy bill. You know they tried to buy them off with pork, you know earmarks, that you know they’re going to be earmarks in this bill and they tried to intimidate us with polls. They tried to scare us off by calling us the party of no. Yes. They wanted to call us the party of no as if, as if that was going to scare us away but none of it worked. All of us, every single one us, stood tall that day because we were listening to the American people who sent us there to represent them.

You know there’s one thing I want you to know about me is that I’m a regular guy. I grew up working at my dad’s tavern. I mopped floors. I did dishes. I waited tables. I tended bar. I learned to deal that every character that walks in the door. But I was lucky enough while I was in college to get to work for a small business and eventually bought that small business and grew it into a business that I own myself. I thought I was going to do that the rest of my career except somewhere along the line I ended up here in the United States Congress and ended up as the leader of the Republicans in the House. It’s, you just never know what path you’re going to end up on. But my experiences in life taught me three lessons. Three lessons that I’d like share with you because these are the lessons that I think all successful leaders, parties and movements have. They’re at the core of who I am and how I operate and I think they say an awful lot how I would operate if Republicans were the majority and if I had the opportunity to be the speaker of the House. You know I think the first lesson’s pretty simple. Be open, be transparent and be willing to listen. You know I come from a big family. I’ve got 11 brothers and sisters and my parents worked hard to send us to parochial schools, sent the nine boys to Mueller High School of all places and you know I worked my way through Xavier University and I got a great education. It must have been one of those Dayton people over there. I’ve got a couple of musketeers here. But listen I did get a good education but I learned to be a straight shooter. I learned that honesty is the best policy and I learned to listen whether it was in school, whether it was a lecture, whether I was being scolded but you know I was a salesman. People that the best attributes for a good salesman is the ability to speak. I would argue that the best attribute of a good salesman is the ability to listen and the willingness to listen and so too often our elected officials in this country really do get it backwards. They think it’s their job to speak all the time and they think their job is to be the lecturer not the listener and on Politico it had an article recently titled Obama the Scold. I don’t know if you saw it but voter thought they were electing a commander in chief in 2008. Instead they got a professor who offers finger wagging lectures on buying energy efficient light bulbs, exercising more, staying away from blogs and cable news networks and now we’ve seen a president who tells us why we should endure skyrocketing energy prices and higher taxes. We have a president who tells us we need government-run healthcare because doctors remove kids’ tonsils because they make more money. Oh yeah. And even a president who lectures the supreme court of the United States right to their face. Nobody is immune from the finger wagging.

And I was in the Whitehouse for a meeting a few weeks back. We were talking about the economy and jobs and I was explaining that these democrat polices you know cap and trade national energy tax, a government takeover of our healthcare system, card check, higher tax rates all of this was paralyzing business owners because they had all of this uncertainty and you know those small business owners can plan, invest or hire new workers in this kind of environment. The president didn’t like it. He looked at me, he slapped the table and said Boehner it’s not my policies that are paralyzing the employers it’s you Republicans who are scaring them. I said Mr. President the American people aren’t scared about what we have to say they’re scared by the policies that are being promoted by your administration and you colleagues up on the hill. I told him, well here’s the thing, the American people want leaders who will listen. They don’t need any more lecturers coming to Washington. They’ve ignored the, the cries of outrage from the American people by forcing a vote, bill after bill, without giving lawmakers enough time to even read the bill. They’ve written bill after bill behind closed doors replacing transparency with a cornhusker kickback and all these other sweetheart deals for their union buddies. You know they broken the president’s promise to have all of this debate out on CSPAN and senate Democrats added 70 phantom amendments to their healthcare bill out, after it come out of committee before it showed up on the House floor and nobody can explain where they came from. Ladies and gentlemen if you help elect a republican congress this November and if I’m fortunate enough to be the speaker of the House I’ll pledge to you right here right now that we’re going to run the House differently. And I don’t mean differently from the way the Democrats were running the House today I mean differently in the way the House has been run under both Democrats and Republicans in the past.

I was there for the contract in 1994. I helped write it. My current chief of staff was the director of the contract and the way, the things that we did the first 100 days changed the way the congress works. We forced congress to live under the same laws we expect all other Americans to live under and we require for the first time to have private audits for the books of the U.S. House. Novel idea. But these changes were huge at the time. The reform has to be an ongoing process and if I’m the speaker next year I’m going to get the reform movement moving again in the Unites States Congress. One of my first orders of business would be to post every bill online for at least 72 hours before it comes to the floor of the House for a vote. We’ll require every committee to quickly post the bills that move out of their committee and put those bills online so that you can read them and outlaw any phantom amendments from showing up to the bill before it gets to the House. We’ll put cameras in the Rules Committee so you can figure out what really goes in the Rules Committee where they debate what bills come to the floor and under what conditions the bill comes to the floor. We’ll ban the practice of airdropping earmarks into bills at the last minute so nobody knows that it’s really there. And we’ll outlaw monuments to me. This is what lawmakers earmark money for projects that have their name on it. And we’ll take advantage of new technology to break down the walls between citizens and legislatures in order to make our congress more transparent and accountable to the American people. This is all part of our congressional transparency initiative and I’m really serious about it. Greg Walden of Oregon, he’s the new chairman of our republican leadership team, is heading this project up and if you want to know more about it you can go to gopleader.gov/readthebill, gopleader.gov/readthebill and you’ll see all of these commonsense ideas that are for you.

The second lesson I’m going to talk about today is something I always tell my colleagues. If you do the right things for the right thing, for the right reasons good things will happen. You know we’ve seen this happen over and over the last year and there’s probably not a week that goes by when I don’t say this to my colleagues. If you stand up and do the right things for the right reasons good things really will happen. We stood united against the stimulus bill. We also were united in a $410 billion omnibus spending spree that went on. We were unanimously opposed to the president’s $3.6 trillion budget last year and not one republican supported their plan to turn the tarp bailout into a permanent slush fund for politicians. On cap and trade, they’re so-called national energy tax, I stood on the floor and I read by, line by line for over an hour because they gave us less than 24 hours to read this bill and we all opposed it as well. We didn’t bend on healthcare and I’m going to continue to insist that the Democrats scrap their big government takeover of healthcare and start over.

Our current healthcare system needs help but we need to work together and the only way to do that is to start with a clean sheet of paper, put Republicans and Democrats in a room and let’s see what we can agree on. We’ve got commonsense ideas to help make our current system work better that don’t involved the federal government taking control of our entire system. You know the president recently admitted that his healthcare bill had run into a buzz saw. Well what the president actually said was that he ran into a buzz saw of lobbyists and special interests. Well when you stop and think about this, this is, this is outright insulting. It’s insulting to you and millions of Americans who stood up and said no to the government takeover of our healthcare system. Mr. President the buzz saw that your healthcare bill ran into wasn’t lobbyists and special interests it was tens of millions of Americans who were saying stop and, and Americans need to stay involved in this. They’re still trying to put this bill together. They’re still trying to find some sneaky way, two track process, to move this big government-run plan through and there’s another report out this afternoon where they’re going to try to do this so I would ask you keep your eyes on it.

There’s another issue that we don’t bend on and that’s the issue of the sanctity of life and in November republican lawmakers joined with some democrat lawmakers to stop them from using any federal taxpayer funds from being used to provide for abortions in America. We got some flak, we got some flak for working with the other side but I’m going to tell you. When it comes to protecting the unborn we’ll take the votes wherever we can get them.

We stood on principle. We did the right thing for the right reasons and we’re showing I believe the American people that there’s a clear difference between the two parties. But we won’t stop there. Baby boomers, my generation, we’ve created a pretty big mess. We’ve made promises to ourselves that our kids and grandkids simply cannot afford. To most politicians, it’s easier just to keep kicking the can down the road or create some toothless commission. If those in charge won’t step up and offer the serious solutions to fix entitlement programs, we need leaders who will and that’s why my third and final lesson is that real leaders work harder than their opponents.

You know when you’re talking about sports, business, politics, anything, the team that works the hardest is the team that usually wins and the hard work isn’t just winning the majority. It’s in doing something great with it. Now I warned Nancy Pelosi of this when I gave her the gavel on that first day of January in 2007. I said the value of a majority lies not in the opportunity to wield great power but in the chance to use power to do great things but they aren’t up to the task. Whether there is more spending, more taxing, more government, all we’ve been left with is more debt and fewer jobs in our country. The hard work is cutting spending, getting control of the debt and living within your means. The hard work is helping to create jobs by blocking needless regulations, expanding energy in America and opening new markets for American goods. The hard work is keeping terrorists out of American and defeating Al Qaeda not reading them their Miranda Rights and then putting on, moving them to the United States to put them on trial.

This is the hard work that Republicans are prepared to do and in the months ahead we’re going to tell the nation exactly what we do differently if we’re entrusted with their power but it’s not going to be a document handed down from on high that would land something like a thud all right but it’s going to be built by listening. I asked Kevin McCarthy of California, my colleague, to lead this project on behalf of House Republicans. We’re going to listen to things like the contract from America. We’re going to listen to things like the Mount Vernon statement. We’re going to listen to the tea party movement. It will come, our manifesto, whatever it will be called, will come from the people who are really in charge of this country and that’s the American people and while the other side is busy mocking the tea partiers and calling them names we’re going to listen to them. We’re going to work with them and stand with them and we’re going walk amongst them.

It’s going to take an awful lot of work, it’s going to take an awful lot of work to elect a new majority in congress and to take on the problems that are being created up there today. We need to pick up 40 seats in the House. Sounds like a really big number but remember in 1994 we picked up, or 54 seats in that year, and I can tell you right now we have, we have more candidates than we’ve ever had. Our goal is to get a candidate in all 435 seats and today we have one or more candidates in the over 340 of those districts and out of 100 of most competitive districts in American about 90 of those have one or more candidates, in most cases more candidates, races that we have a much better chance I believe of winning.

But I need your help. I’m going to say it loud and clear. I do need your help. Everyone in this room is already engaged. Your efforts help win campaigns. Your blogs are must reads around the country and on Capitol Hill and your ideas will fuel the future of the conservative movement. So you’re already part of the fight. Now that’s why I need to you to recruit your friends, your neighbors, people who don’t usually have time to get involved in all of this. Maybe they went to a tea party but quite, aren’t quite sold on Republicans yet. Either way, I’m going to ask all of you to reach out. Bring your neighbors, your friends, your associates into this, into this movement to help take back our country. Please encourage them to visit my web site freedomproject.org. You can sign up to receive updates or you can connect with me on Facebook, Twitter, Digg at two places, either at John Boehner or at GOP leader. You know share your thoughts with me. Tell us when we’re doing the right thing. Tell us when we’re doing the wrong thing. Listen I think all of you know there’s a political rebellion brewing in America. I saw it last night when I was in a room with 50 senior Americans who one by one came over to express to me their outrage. I saw it this morning when I got on an airplane and the captain came back before we took off to shake my hand and to say to me keeping fighting on our behalf. I knew it when the, I knew it when the flight attendant came up to me when I was getting off the plane to tell me you’ve got to keep fighting on our behalf and when a taxicab driver told me this this afternoon that’s when I knew that there’s a real rebellion going on in America.

Now back in September I stood in front of 18,000 people at a tea party organized by our local tea party folks. It was right there in Westchester, Ohio right in my own hometown and I mention this because the Republican Party should not attempt to co-opt the tea parties. I think that’s the dumbest thing in the world. What we will do as long as I’m the leader is respect them, listen to them and walk amongst them. The other party will never ever do that. You know at that rally and others like it around the country that I’ve attended I’ve seen the same thing. Americans from all walks of life getting involved in politics for the first time. Families, young adults, grandparents, small business owners and more. Working Americans who believe in our country and who believe in our constitution are saying enough is enough.

I can tell you that a republican congress is not going to change the world in two years. We won’t. We can’t. But we can stop the Pelosi Obama agenda and we can do it quickly. And what we can do is to continue to offer better solutions to the American people to get our country back on track once again and so in closing my pledge to you is this. If you will help me elect a republican majority this November, we will be open, we will be transparent and we will listen. We will stand on principle and we will do the right thing for our country. We’ll work hard 24/7 to clean up the messes that have been left there for our kids and our grandkids. So come with me. Work with me. We can win this fight.

As most of you know, I, a lot of you know, played football in high school at Mueller. They won a lot of state football championship after I was there but one thing I learned from my high school football coach was this. Never, ever, ever give up. I’ve been in a lot of fights just like you have. I’ve been in a lot of tough spots in my life and my career but I never, ever give up. I believe in America. I didn’t come here to be a congressman. I didn’t come here to be the speaker in the House. I came here to fight for our country so that our kids and grandkids have the same opportunities that we had growing up in our great country. We need to take our country back now so that those opportunities for them will be there. Come join the fight with me.

 

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