Biography

His father, a lawyer, was a friend of Sen. Russ Feingold and they shared an office in Janesville, Wisconsin.

Has worked as a waiter, fitness trainer and for Oscar Mayer (has even driven the Weinermobile).

While in Washington he sleeps on a cot in his Longworth House office.

Went on the genealogy show Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr and found out that through his mother's German ancestry he has a small amount of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. According to Dr Gates "You could have knocked him over with a feather.".

U.S. Representative (R-Wisconsin) (1998 - present).

The idea that a few bureaucrats know what's best for all of society, or possess more information about human wants and needs than millions of individuals interacting in a free market, is both false and arrogant.

If somebody is going to try to paste an epistemology on me, then give me Thomas Aquinas.

The way the left tells it, the Republican Party is in this big massive civil war. It's Tea Party versus establishment, libertarians versus social conservatives. There is infighting, conflict, backbiting, discord. Look, I'm Irish. That's my idea of a family reunion.

[on his proposal that the government might offer a probationary right to work to illegal immigrants] This gives people the ability to get right with the law, pay a fine, pay back taxes, learn English, learn civics, assimilate, be gainfully employed. And during the five-year period the government has to do its job. It has to secure the border. It has to have a tracking system in place so we know if a person overstays their visa.

[observation on the state of the U.S. economy, 2014] It's the worst economic recovery since World War II. We should have slingshotted out of this recession. We have a small temporary aberration in our deficits only to be seen with much higher deficits in the near future, and we're not preparing for that.