Party leaders and whips of the United States House of Representatives are elected by their respective parties in a closed-door caucus by secret ballot and are also known as floor leaders. The U.S. House of Representatives does not officially use the term "Minority Leader" although the media frequently does. The House instead uses the terms "Republican Leader" or "Democratic Leader" depending on which party holds a minority of seats.

The current House Majority Leader is Republican Eric Cantor, while the current House Minority Leader is Democrat Nancy Pelosi.

The current House Majority whip is Republican Kevin McCarthy, while the current House Minority whip is Democrat Steny Hoyer.

Unlike in Westminster style legislatures, as well as in the case of the Senate Majority Leader, the House Majority Leader is subordinate to the Speaker of the House, who is by tradition the actual head of the majority party in the House of Representatives, although the Speaker usually does not participate in debate and rarely votes on the floor. In some cases, though, Majority Leaders have been more influential than the Speaker; notably Tom DeLay who was more prominent than Speaker Dennis Hastert, while Speaker Newt Gingrich delegated to Dick Armey an unprecedented level of authority over scheduling legislation on the House floor (a power traditionally reserved to the Speaker).

In U.S. politics, the minority leader is the floor leader of the second largest caucus in a legislative body. Given the two-party nature of the U.S. system, the minority leader is almost inevitably either a Republican or a Democrat, with their counterpart being of the opposite party. The position is essentially that of the Leader of the Opposition. In bicameral legislatures, the counterpart to the minority leader in the lower house is often the Speaker and the majority leader is hence only the second-most senior member of the majority caucus, whereas in the upper house the titular Speaker is often a separately-elected officer such as a lieutenant governor and the majority leader may in fact be the single most powerful member of the majority caucus.

The minority leader is often assisted in his/her role by whips, whose job is to enforce party discipline on votes deemed to be crucial by the party leadership and to ensure that members do not vote in a way not approved of by the party. Some votes are deemed to be so crucial as to lead to punitive measures (such as demotion from choice committee assignments) if the party line is violated; decisions such as these are often made by the minority leader in conjunction with other senior party leaders.

John Andrew Boehner ( /ˈbeɪnər/ BAY-nər; born November 17, 1949) is the 61st and current Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. A member of the Republican Party, he is the U.S. Representative from Ohio's 8th congressional district, serving since 1991. The district includes several rural and suburban areas near Cincinnati and Dayton, and a small portion of Dayton itself.

Boehner previously served as the House Minority Leader from 2007 until 2011, and House Majority Leader from 2006 until 2007. As Speaker of the House, Boehner is second in line to the presidency of the United States following the Vice President in accordance with the Presidential Succession Act.

Boehner was born in Reading, Ohio, the son of Mary Anne (née Hall) and Earl Henry Boehner, the second of twelve children. His father was of German descent and his mother had German and Irish ancestry. He grew up in modest circumstances, having shared one bathroom with his eleven siblings in a two-bedroom house in Cincinnati. His parents slept on a pull-out couch. He started working at his family's bar at age 8, a business founded by their grandfather Andy Boehner in 1938. He has lived in Southwest Ohio his entire life. All but two of his siblings still live within a few miles of each other; two are unemployed and most of the others have blue-collar jobs.

Kenton B. Onstad is a North Dakota Democratic-NPL Party member of the North Dakota House of Representatives, representing the 4th district since 2001. He currently serves as Assistant Minority Leader.

Kurt L. Daudt (born September 1973) is a Minnesota politician and a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives from District 17A, which includes portions of Anoka, Chisago and Isanti counties in the east central part of the state, just north of the Twin Cities metropolitan area. A Republican, he is also a business manager.

Daudt was first elected to the House in 2010. He serves on the Commerce and Regulatory Reform, the Higher Education Policy and Finance, the Redistricting, and the Rules and Legislative Administration Committees, and on the Taxes Subcommittee for the Property and Local Tax Division. He is an assistant majority leader and vice chair of the Rules and Legislative Administration Committee.

Daudt served as an Isanti County Commissioner from 2005 to 2010. Before that, he was a township board supervisor for Stanford Township from 1995 to 2005, and a member of the East Central Regional Library Board. He was also a founding member of Project 24, a nonprofit organization that builds orphanages in Kenya. To date, the project has raised over $500,000 and built six orphanages.