John Boehner needs to vote where his heart is

A crying shame:

On "60 Minutes," Boehner told Stahl that he couldn't visit schools anymore; that he got too upset, worrying about whether today's schoolchildren will have the same opportunities that he and his generation had. As he spoke, he started to weep. Why?

He does, I believe, worry about the children, and yet his entire political philosophy is devoted to limiting the federal government's ability to help them. He has voted against providing health insurance for children (many times), against student aid, against unemployment benefits, against equal pay, against food safety, against money for teachers, against raising the minimum wage, against tobacco education, mine safety, alternative energy, pollution control, whistle-blower protection, science and technology research. If he were making his decisions based on what government programs might help today's schoolchildren reach their dreams, like the Kennedy- and Johnson-era programs that helped him, his voting record would be very different. It is a deep enough contradiction to make him weep for the future.

"Making sure that these kids have a shot at the American dream, like I did, is important," he told Stahl through his tears. Yet he and his Republican colleagues are working hard to make sure that they can't; that the middle class he once aspired to becomes smaller rather than bigger. His college received federal grants and federal student aid while he was there, and it continues to do so, including from the stimulus bill he voted against.

The America that gave Boehner a shot at his dream had a minimum wage that, adjusted for inflation, topped $10 an hour. In 2006, he voted against letting the minimum rise from $5.15 to its current $7.25. It took Boehner seven years to finish college while working minimum-wage jobs; how long would it have taken if the minimum wage had purchased as little as it does today?

Boehner put himself through school, he said on election night, unsuccessfully trying to stem the flow of tears, "working every rotten job there was." He mopped floors, waited tables and tended bar. One could feel both his horror at once having done that sort of work and his exuberance at having left it behind to become the golfing, jet-setting, deeply tanned man weeping before the cameras.

Would he agree with this assessment? Does he know that, despite his assertions to the contrary, cutting taxes for the rich won't do anything to produce those jobs he keeps promising? Does he feel conflicted knowing that his golf bill (reported at $83,000 last year) is six or seven times the take-home pay of someone working 40 hours a week at minimum wage, and several times the median income in many of our communities?

More thoughts on the "Weeper" of the House by Gail Collins