It was written up as the end of an era when then-House Speaker John Boehner teamed with then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to ax the House Page Program.
But in the first full airing of his unexpected move in late 2011, Boehner said that not only did members not care, it almost went unnoticed.
“We had pages for the fall of 2010, spring of 2011, and we had summer pages, but when it came time in the spring to start appointing pages for the fall, we just didn’t do it. And so, we got back after Labor Day, and there were no more pages, and guess what? Nobody really missed it,” he said in an interview.
“I don’t recall any member coming up to me and complaining,” Boehner said. “I was ready for it because I certainly could defend that it was time to end the program. But I don’t recall ever having a conversation,” he said.
The decision was announced in August 2011, but there wasn’t a huge outcry, leaving it to former pages to try to restore a patronage system dating back to the Continental Congress.
“What happened was that the former pages heard about it, and then the former page association, or the whatever it’s called, they tried to make an effort to bring back pages, but there really was no effort to bring the page program back,” said Boehner, on a book tour to promote his memoir, On the House.
His book, No. 1 on Amazon, revealed that he had it out for the program as far back as 2006 when Florida Rep. Mark Foley “behaved inappropriately with young male pages.” He asked then-Speaker Dennis Hastert to kill it, and later, in 2009, thought Pelosi would stop it.
Many fans of the 80-page program, still operated in the Senate and Supreme Court, believed that Boehner and Pelosi were worried about potential page scandals and that that was the overriding reason to kill it.
Boehner denied that and blamed the costs and technology for ending the program. But he also hinted that there was a desire for him and Pelosi to duck blame for any future problems.
“At the end of the day, there are two people going to be responsible for these 80 16-year-olds: Pelosi and me,” he said.
Former pages with the U.S. Capitol Page Alumni Association are still trying to bring it back, citing its rich history and the hands-on experience high school students received.
The association’s Jerry Papazian, a page in 1972, told us, “The page program was never about delivering papers as cheaply as possible. It was about instilling civic virtue in the next generation, which is why it survived a Civil War, a depression, and two World Wars.”
Public interest lawyer Jonathan Turley, a page in 1978, said bringing it back would reverse Boehner’s misunderstanding of the program.
“What they killed was one of the most powerful symbols of our government. Like much of the politics of our age, our leaders trivialize symbols and traditions that bring nothing to them or their insular interests,” said Turley.
“Boehner’s comments confirm the view he and Nancy Pelosi held little regard (or understanding) of the historic page program. His comments reduce the page system to glorified messengers. That was never the case. He and Pelosi killed one of the oldest traditions in Congress. Pages have long represented a rising generation in our democracy. They served Congress with loyalty for decades only to be summarily dismissed by Boehner and Pelosi in a backroom deal. To say this decision was based on the expense of the system would be laughable if it were not so tragic,” Turley added.
But for Boehner, the issue was less lofty. Asked if it should be returned, he said, “Well, I just don’t see that there’s enough for them to do, and having a bunch of 16-year-olds with minimal supervision and not much to do is a bad prescription.”
