According to the San Francsico Chronicle:
Sacramento Republican Rep. Dan Lungren has signed off on a change order to the contract with outside counsel Paul Clement, who is handling the defense of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. It allows Clement's fees to triple to $1.5 million.
Nancy Pelosi had this to say about that:
It is absolutely unconscionable that Speaker Boehner is tripling the cost for his legal boondoggle to defend the indefensible Defense of Marriage Act. 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.
Hey, when you're defending multiple cases in multiple Federal Courts all over the country, what's $1,500,000 ? Barely enough to pay for your hotel bills, in all likelihood.
Cases such as Golinski in California, Windsor in New York, and Gill in Massachusetts are slowly winding their way through Federal District and Appellate (in the case of Gill) courts, challenging the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act. One or another will eventually reach the United States Supreme Court, but not before Clement and his law firm have racked up a lot more than $1.5 million in attorneys fees and expenses and billed them to your 1040.
Let's hope that this money and the money being contributed and spent by those on the side of equality is not being spent in vain. That the Supreme Court will, in the not-too-distant future, issue a strong, definitive ruling stating that DOMA is an unconstitutional violation of equal protection.
Clement may be able to laugh all the way to the bank, but the struggle for equality will have notched perhaps its most important victory yet.
11:28 AM PT: From the front page:
In a statement Tuesday, Reps. Robert Brady (D-Pa.), Charles Gonzalez (D-Texas) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) criticized their GOP colleagues for increasing the contract with the lawyer hired to defend DOMA from $500,000 to $1.5 million.