Pelosi Statement on Speaker Boehner's Waste of $1.5 Million in Taxpayer Dollars Defending DOMA

Statement

Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today after the Committee on House Administration reported that, over the past fifteen months, Speaker Boehner has racked up nearly $1.5 million in taxpayer-funded legal bills to an outside law firm to defend the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). To date, Speaker Boehner's legal team has lost all five DOMA cases decided in federal courts:

"For more than a year, Speaker Boehner and Congressional Republicans have committed valuable taxpayer dollars to defending discrimination and preserving inequality -- only to lose case after case in their effort to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act. There is nothing effective or efficient about this utter abuse of the people's trust or the public purse; it is simply wasteful and wrong, and Americans deserve better.

"It is unconscionable for Speaker Boehner and Republican leaders, including Chairman Dan Lungren who authorized the contracts with the outside law firm, to continue to stand on the wrong side of history at taxpayer expense. Yet, rather than join Democrats to create jobs and strengthen the middle class, Republicans refuse to abandon their reprehensible fight to deny basic civil rights and justice to an entire group of their fellow Americans.

"The American people should no longer have to foot the bill for Speaker Boehner's campaign to appease the most conservative forces within the Republican Party. It is time for the Speaker and Congressional Republicans to drop their frivolous, taxpayer-funded lawsuits without any delay. When they do, we will all look forward to the day when DOMA is relegated to the dustbin of history once and for all."

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