Ohio: John Boehner

COLUMBUS --Cleveland's public schools may not get the windfall they expected under President Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan.

Instead, Gov. Ted Strickland's administration wants to take some of the money and spread it statewide. It doesn't matter that projections from Congress, when promoting the bill, showed that the schools most in need of educational improvement, in the poorest neighborhoods, would get much of the stimulus money targeted specifically to them.

It apparently doesn't matter, either, that the Cleveland schools' chief academic officer thought that the money would come directly from Washington rather than be given to the governor to redistribute as he sees fit.

WASHINGTON -- House Republican leader John Boehner has perfected the art of disagreeing without being disagreeable.

That's why the dapper congressman from southwest Ohio is the official GOP voice of opposition to newly elected President Barack Obama, charged with sowing the seeds for a Republican revival if the public sours on Obama.

The upbeat Boehner (prounounced BAY-ner) is not afraid to personally praise the president while dismissing his agenda as socialist. He applauds Obama's professed willingness to cut wasteful government programs and work with Republicans, while claiming his programs will return to "the era of big government."

"When the president reaches across the aisle, he'll have no stronger supporters than Republicans," Boehner recently told reporters.

If the budget is adopted, the $475 million would be 10 times larger than any single chunk provided in the past, said Andy Buchsbaum of the National Wildlife Federation.

"Yeah, its big, and it's as real as a president can make it," said Buchsbaum, regional executive director of the federation's Great Lakes office. "It still has to go through Congress, but there's never been a presidential budget that commits this much money to the restoration of the Great Lakes."

Northeast Ohio medical institutions could benefit too, thanks to proposals to boost federal cancer research dollars, with at least some of the $6 billion nationally flowing to the Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals and other Ohio institutions, said Sen.

Whether it's self-proclaimed (I'm not making this up) exorcist Governor Bobby Jindal, "golf-outing tan man-of-the-people" John Boehner, or "don't I remind you of Newt" Eric Cantor, the GOP response on opposing everything Obama is the same: "We'd love to help the guy out but we can't betray our core values of limited government and fiscal conservatism."

When it came to creating a big prescription drug benefit under Medicare that was introduced by the Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner and Eric Cantor voted "Aye."  PATRIOT ACT?  Ditto.  Every appropriation bill and emergency resolution giving a Republican President every dime he wanted even though it meant a double of the national debt?  As Sarah Palin would say, "You betcha.