Boehner: "We're Broke," But Not So Broke We Can't Hire Expensive Lawyer to Defend DOMA

U.S. Speaker of the House John Boehner has been emphatic over the past few months in insisting, "We're broke." He's said it everywhere - on Fox News, on Meet the Press, in speeches. He's not alone, of course. Lots of GOP politicians have been giving "We're broke" a workout this year, most notably rightwing extremists such as governors Scott Walker and Chris Christie. And of course, none of these budget-obsessed GOP folks is ever willing to consider that entities that are "broke" probably need to look into raising revenues, because "tax cuts" are a perennial fixture on the list of Republican catchphrases. No, the answer to our "broke" problem, they say, always and forever will be to "cut spending."

So you may understandably be flabbergasted by John "We're Broke" Boehner's decision to have the House of Representatives hire an attorney to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) - which defined marriage as being between one man and one woman - after the Department of Justice announced that it will no longer defend the law in court. And he didn't hire just any ol' lawyer - he got George W. Bush's former solicitor general Paul Clement, and the price tag is going to be huge.

Although Clement’s firm is charging less than the $900 an hour they typically bill for their top attorneys’ work, Clement will still leave the American people with a massive legal bill:

2. The General Counsel agrees to pay Contractor for all contractual services a sum not to exceed $500,000.00. … Furthermore, it is understood and agreed that should the $500,000 cap be reached before the Litigation is complete, and if the cap has not then been raised by written agreement…contractor shall not be obligated to continue providing legal services under this Agreement.

3. The General Counsel agress to pay Contractor at a blended rate of $520.00 per hour for all reasonable attorney time expended in connection with the Litigation, and at 75 percent of the Contractor’s usual and customary rates for all reasonable non-attorney time…and to reimburse Contractor for all reasonable expenses incurred by the Contractor in connection with the Litigation[.]

So the good news is Clement's firm is giving the American people a discount. The bad news is that it was completely unnecessary to hire any outside attorney for this job, let alone one this expensive. As ThinkProgress points out:

The U.S. House’s Office of General Counsel already employs a team of exceptionally competent lawyers who are all perfectly capable of drafting and filing a legal brief, and none of these lawyers earn more than a fraction of Clement’s multi-million dollar salary.

Now, remember, Boehner has repeatedly claimed that the U.S. is "broke." As ThinkProgress noted yesterday, this is the same guy who claimed he was willing to shut down the government unless President Obama agreed to massive spending cuts from the 2011 budget. Yet we are apparently solvent enough to justify spending possibly $520 an hour on an unnecessary private sector lawyer to defend a law that the DOJ has stopped defending because it believes it will be found unconstitutional.

While there is clearly an ideological component to Justice's decision not to defend DOMA anymore, there is also sound fiscal reasoning behind it. One federal judge has already struck down the law, and given that DOMA's sole purpose is to deny a right to one segment of the population that the rest of the population enjoys, it is plausible to assume it will eventually be struck down by the Supreme Court. Therefore, allocating scarce human and financial resources to defending the law is wasteful. The DOJ is acting in a fiscally responsible manner on this issue.

Boehner, on the other hand, is acting on ideology alone as he countermands the DOJ and spends money he has repeatedly insisted we don't have and can't afford in pursuit of a conservative social agenda item. And make no mistake - denying LGBT Americans equal rights to marriage is solely a conservative social agenda item, as a CNN/Opinion Research poll released today makes clear. in that poll, Americans polled favored recognizing same-sex marriages with the same rights as traditional marriages 51-47%. But look at the breakdown of that finding ideologically (click images to enlarge):

As you can see, it's not just Democrats and liberals who favor recognition of same-sex marriages - independents and moderates favor it as well. Only Republicans and conservatives oppose it. And tea party supporters, who frequently claim to be solely motivated by fiscal conservatism (a claim perpetuated by the media) are nevertheless overwhelmingly opposed to same-sex marriage, despite the lack of any fiscal advantage to that position.

So given the fact that there is no fiscal gain in denying gays and lesbians the right to marry, the fact that only the conservative "base" opposes it, and the additional fact that it's going to cost the American taxpayers big money to fight it, there can be only one reason that Boehner is choosing this course of action.

He's pandering to the bigoted conservative base.