Alaska Gov. Bill Walker
Alaska's independent Gov. Bill Walker, fed up with a Republican legislature which refused to even debate a Medicaid expansion proposal, decided last month to
act unilaterally and take the expansion. Alaska's attorney general and the legislature's legal department
agree that the state constitution gives him authority to do so. Nonetheless, the Republican-led legislature has
committed to spending a minimum of $450,000 in taxpayer funds to sue. The governor is likely to spend an equal amount in defending the action.
Who did the Alaska Republicans get to be their lawyer? Who else, Paul Clement.
Clement, who has urged courts to adopt conservative positions on issues as diverse as immigration, health care, voter suppression, […] and gay rights, is the de facto Solicitor General of the Republican Party—an experienced Supreme Court advocate frequently hired by Republican lawmakers and interest groups to argue landmark cases.
If past is prologue, it is likely that the total bill for this legal team will exceed $450,000. In 2011, for example, U.S. House Republicans hired Clement to defend the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act for “a sum not to exceed $500,000.00.” This contract was amended several times to raise this cap, however. In the end, the American people paid Clement’s legal team $2.3 million to unsuccessfully defend the proposition that same-sex couples are not entitled to the same federal marriage rights as opposite-sex couples.
Now Alaskans are going to have to shell out again to pay Clement to fight against their interests, this time with their state taxes. State Rep. Sam Kito III
notes that the expansion would "save the state over $6 million in the first year, bring over $140 million in federal funding to the state, and provide healthcare coverage for up to 40,000 hardworking, low-income Alaskans." What the Republican legislature is doing, in contrast, will cost the state maybe as much as $1 million.