John Tanner was born on September 22, 1944, at the Dyersburg Army Air Base in Halls, Tennessee. He grew up in Obion County and attended public schools in Union City, Tennessee. In 1962, he entered the University of Tennessee at Knoxville on a basketball scholarship and earned a Bachelor's Degree in business administration in 1966. He earned his law degree in 1968 from the University of Tennessee's School of Law.

Rep. Tanner entered the Navy in 1968 and served at the rank of Lieutenant. He received an honorable discharge in 1972 and entered the Tennessee Army National Guard, from which he retired in the fall of 2000 at the rank of Colonel. John currently serves as a member of the U.S. Naval Academy's Board of Visitors and is one of few Members of Congress to have served on the Board of Visitors for the Naval Academy, the U.S. Air Force Academy and the U.S. Military Academy. He has held various business interests, including a law practice and a family-owned general insurance agency.

Tanner served in the Tennessee House of Representatives from 1976 until 1988 and was sworn in to the U.S. House of Representatives in January 1989. John served on the Committee on National Security and the Committee on Science until his appointment in 1997 to the powerful Committee on Ways and Means, where he currently serves on the Subcommittee on Trade and the Subcommittee on Oversight. He also serves as Vice Chair of the Democratic Caucus’s Steering and Policy Committee.

Congressman Tanner led the formation of a group of moderate to conservative Democrats known as the Blue Dog Coalition, whose name humorously refers to legendary "yellow-dog Democrats" who had been squeezed so tightly by those on the far left and the far right that they had turned blue. Tanner remains an active leader of the group, which has gained much national recognition for its influence. Tanner co-chairs the Blue Dog Coalition's Budget and Tax Task Force and is an active member of the group's Health and High Tech task forces.

John is Vice President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, the civilian arm of the NATO Alliance. The Parliamentary Assembly is made up of legislators from NATO’s member nations and associate member nations, who meet twice annually to discuss international matters of defense, security and economics.

John is also involved with the Congressional Sportsmen's Caucus, where his conservation work has earned him several awards, including the Outdoor Life Conservation Award for Public Service. He has been recognized for his commitment to a strong national defense by organizations such as the AMVETS, which gave Tanner its prestigious "Silver Bayonet Award." He serves on the Steering Committee for the Congressional Rural Health Care Caucus and is a member of the Mississippi River Caucus, the House Internet Caucus, the New Democrat Coalition, the I-69 Caucus and the House Wireless Caucus, among other organizations.

Tanner has been recognized repeatedly for his commitment to fiscal responsibility by several independent organizations such as The Concord Coalition. At home, his common sense approach to the challenges Americans face and his solution-oriented views on a host of budget, tax and trade issues have won him regular praise from newspapers, including The (Memphis) Commercial Appeal, The (Nashville) Tennessean and The Jackson Sun.

John is married to the former Betty Ann Portis of Huntingdon, Tennessee. They have two children, Elizabeth Tanner Atkins and John Portis Tanner, and three grandchildren, Abby Frances Atkins, Tanner Lantrip Atkins and Beck Counce Tanner.

John and Betty Ann live in Union City, where John is an Elder in the First Christian Church, Disciples of Christ. He is also past president of the Union City Rotary Club, a Paul Harris Fellow, a 32nd Degree Mason, a member of the Al Chymia Shrine in Memphis and a member of the Professional Advisory Board of ALSAC-St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Tennessee’s 8^th Congressional District runs from the northern Memphis suburbs north along the Mississippi River to the Kentucky state line and east to include southern Clarksville before stretching south to Dickson then southwest roughly along Interstate 40 to Shelby County. The 8^th District includes all of Benton, Carroll, Crockett, Dickson, Dyer, Gibson, Haywood, Henry, Houston, Humphreys, Lake, Lauderdale, Madison, Obion, Stewart, Tipton and Weakley counties, as well as portions of Montgomery and Shelby counties.