John Boehner has skimmed $742,000 in House funds to defend DOMA, but his cap on the DOMA defense fund is actually $3.1 million taxpayer dollars.
In January, Speaker John Boehner and the House Republican leadership secretly raised the spending cap on their DOMA defense fund a third time to $3.1 million. The cap is now more than six times its original $500,000 limit. Democrats had no idea that the cap had been secretly raised until after it had already been finalized.
Here’s the kicker. John Boehner has taken money out of the Justice Department’s budget to defend the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act. According to the Huffington Post, “Boehner so far has collected $742,000 to defend DOMA, and that money was skimmed from funds that would normally go toward House officer and employee salaries, Chief Administrative Officer Dan Strodel told members of a House Appropriations subcommittee. Strodel said none of that money came out of the budget of the Justice Department, which dropped its defense of DOMA in February 2011 after Attorney General Eric Holder determined it to be unconstitutional. Boehner, in his authority as speaker, has been defending the law on behalf of the federal government ever since.”
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Boehner is taking money out of the Justice Department’s budget to defend a policy that the Justice Department doesn’t support, but this is more than a budgetary issue. Speaker Boehner is using taxpayer money to defend a policy that 59% of Americans oppose. A February Center for American Progress poll found that 59% of people oppose the legal prohibition of offering federal benefits to legally married same sex couples.
The American people oppose the policy. The Justice Department refuses to defend it, but John Boehner is spending your money defending something that most of you don’t want. Like a thief in the night, Boehner raised the DOMA defense cap without telling the American people. As the Supreme Court hears arguments on DOMA today, John Boehner is nowhere to be found.
After stealing from the American people, John Boehner doesn’t even have the courage to confess to his crime.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
