House Speaker John Boehner has announced that he will resign as speaker and forfeit his congressional seat at the end of next month.
Boehner, R-Ohio, was first elected to Congress in 1990 and was elected as speaker in 2011. His announcement comes the day after Pope Francis became the first pope to address a joint session of Congress at Boehner’s invitation.
Here are six times Boehner clashed with conservatives.
1) Planned Parenthood
Boehner, though pro-life, indicated that he was unwilling to shut down the government by sending a spending bill to the president’s desk that would end funding for America’s largest abortion provider.
The president had threatened to veto any bill that defunded Planned Parenthood, and House conservatives had said they would not vote for a bill that funded it.
2) Immigration
In an interview with CBS News in July, Boehner said that despite his personal desire for immigration reform, the president had “poisoned the well” with members of his party, making the issue “almost impossible” to resolve.
3) Government spending
After his budget proposal failed in 2013, Boehner expressed frustration with his conservative colleagues.
“You know, they pushed us into this fight to defund Obamacare and to shut down the government. Most of you know, my members know, that wasn’t exactly the strategy that I had in mind. But if you’ll recall the day before the government reopened, one of the people—one of these groups stood up and said, ‘Well, we never really thought it would work,” Boehner said, according to Politico.
4) Export-Import Bank
Despite opposition from conservatives, Boehner wanted to extend the bank’s authorization past its June 30 deadline.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told The Daily Signal in May, “This is a place the speaker [John Boehner] and I disagree upon. I think this is an opportunity to wind down the bank because I think private sector can fill that void.”
5) Power of the purse
Conservatives have argued that Boehner has neglected the House’s power of the purse to stop President Barack Obama’s agenda by refusing to fund the implementation of his executive orders.
6) Obamacare
Following Obama’s reelection in 2012, Boehner told ABC News that the fight over Obamacare was “over,” despite conservatives’ objections to the legislation.
