John Boehner re-elected as U.S. House Speaker

John Boehner, a Republican from the state of Ohio, was re-elected as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Tuesday.

Boehner managed to garner enough votes for the reelection despite challenges from his own party and the Democrats. His tenure will be two years.

During the reelection, Boehner won support of a majority of lawmakers in the House by getting 216 votes, beating prominent challengers Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi who just received 164 votes and Representative Daniel Webster who won 12 votes.

On the opening day of the 114th Republican-controlled Congress, a group of Tea Party insurgents fired off a warning shot to GOP leadership.

In a public roll call, two dozen Republicans cast their votes against Boehner as the House Speaker, double the number who launched a failed coup attempt against him for the post exactly two years ago.

The anti-Boehner crowd’s message was simple: “don’t expect any cooperation in the country’s 114th Congress, even with Republicans in charge of the Senate and holding a historic majority in the House.”

Also on Tuesday, Mitch McConnell, a 72-year old senator from Kentucky, became the U.S. Senate’s majority leader, following Boehner to be one of the two most powerful Republicans in the nation.

U.S. President Barack Obama has invited a number of top congressional leaders, including Boehner and McConnell, to the White House next week for a meeting on the legislative agenda for the year.

According to White House press secretary Josh Earnest, the invited lawmakers will also receive an update from the White House on a number of foreign policy situations.

Xinhua