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Madison -- U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson will use his campaign account to pay for a lawsuit he filed in federal court challenging an aspect of the Affordable Care Act.

That’s according to two people -- Melinda Whitemarsh Schnell, an aide to Johnson, and Rick Esenberg, the president of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, the group that is providing Johnson with legal service.

A retainer agreement requires that the work be paid for, but so far WILL has not billed the Oshkosh Republican’s campaign for its work on the Obamacare lawsuit.

“We haven’t sent a bill because, as a public interest firm that normally does not bill or is paid only at the conclusion of a matter, we tend to bill on a longer cycle than a commercial law firm might,” Esenberg wrote in an email to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Schnell said the campaign would pay the legal bills once it received them.

The two were responding to a news release from the liberal group One Wisconsin Now that said it had reviewed Johnson’s campaign finance reports but found no indication of payments to or obligations for WILL.

Johnson in January filed a lawsuit to block the federal government from helping to pay for health care coverage for members of Congress and their staffs. He said at the time he hoped to raise money through his campaign fund to pay for the effort.

The lawsuit caused rifts within Johnson's party, with U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner -- a Republican from Menomonee Falls -- calling it a “political stunt.”

In November, the Senate Ethics Committee told Johnson he had to pay the fair market value of legal services but could use personal money or campaign funds to pay those costs.

At the request of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Johnson's office on Tuesday released a copy of the letter he received from the committee's chief counsel, John Sassaman, that detailed the rules he must follow.