House Speaker John Boehner has hired former Bush administration Solicitor General Paul Clement to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, signaling a robust legal strategy and bid for his party’s social conservatives, who have taken a back seat to the budget fight./p>

Clement argued the administration’s cases to the Supreme Court as the nation’s highest ranking lawyer. He is now a partner at King & Spaulding and won’t come cheap. The defense could cost millions.

Human Rights Campaign chief Joe Solmonese said the pick means Boehner is “ready to go to great lengths, and the great expense of a high-power law firm, to try to score some cheap political points on the backs of same-sex couples. King & Spaulding were not required to take up this defense and should be ashamed of associating themselves with an effort to deny rights to their fellow citizens.”

Boehner also wrote House minority leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco informing her that Republicans plan to defund part of the Justice Department because of its finding that DOMA is unconstitutional. Purportedly to offset the costs to taxpayers of high-priced outside defense counsel.

Notably, another (and more luminous) former Bush Solicitor General, Ted Olson, is fighting FOR same-sex marriage, teaming with Democrtic lawyer David Bois to fight California Proposition 8..

Brian Brown, head of the anti-gay-marriage National Organization for Marriage, said, “At last we have a legal eagle on this case who actually wants to win in court! Paul Clement is a genuinely distinguished lawyer…who we are confident will win this case….Speaker Boehner is also quite right that the money to defend DOMA should be deducted from the Justice Department’s budget, since they will be doing the job DOJ should have done, but refused to do.”

Pelosi again asked Boehner for an estimate of how much the defense will cost.

Ironically, the DOMA case at issue involves estate taxes, to which Republicans are opposed on principle, at least for straight couples.

The case of Edie Windsor is in federal court in New York. Windsor spent more than 40 years with her partner, Thea Spyer, before they were married in 2007. When Spyer died, Windsor was unable to claim the federal estate marital tax benefit because of DOMA and the federal government imposed estate taxes of more than $360,000 on the money left to her.