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发帖数: 19713 | 1 House Republicans Triple DOMA Defense Budget
By Andrew Harmon
JOHN Boehner X390 20111004 (GETTY) | ADVOCATE.COM
House Speaker John Boehner
The House Republican leadership’s bill for its legal defense of DOMA is on
the rise.
In a modified contract approved Friday, the GOP-led House Bipartisan Legal
Advisory Group (BLAG) agreed to pay Washington, D.C.-based firm Bancroft
PLLC up to $1.5 million for ongoing Defense of Marriage Act litigation.
The $1.5 million cap is triple the amount specified in the original April
contract — the veracity of which Democratic leaders had questioned, given
the volume of DOMA litigation nationwide.
On Tuesday, a spokesman for House Democratic minority leader Nancy Pelosi
called the new cap “absolutely unconscionable.”
"At a time when Americans are hurting and job creation should be the top
priority, it just shows how out of touch House Republicans have become that
they would spend up to $1.5 million dollars to defend discrimination in our
country,” Pelosi deputy press secretary Drew Hammill said.
The modified contract was signed by House general counsel Kerry W. Kirchner
and Paul Clement, lead outside counsel for the litigation and a partner at
Bancroft. The former George W. Bush solicitor general was tapped in April to
represent the Republican-led BLAG while he was a partner at King & Spalding
, though Clement left the Atlanta-based firm after it dropped its contract
with the House of Representatives (firm chairman Robert Hays Jr. said the
vetting process for the litigation had been “inadequate"). |
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