Sec of Defense Robert Gates ducks testifying before Senate Budget Committee

[seafan]

Put the pressure on, Senator Conrad. NO. MORE. EXCUSES. FOR. POPPY'S and JIMMY's. BUDDY.


Gates riles Budget panel

By Elana Schor
February 8, 2007

Senate Budget Committee leaders yesterday gave Defense Secretary Robert Gates until the end of the month to testify on inconsistent cost estimates for the troop “surge” in Iraq.
They set the deadline amid anger among Democrats that Gates cancelled a planned appearance at next Thursday’s hearing on the defense budget and offered to send another Pentagon official instead.
Senators had thought Gates would become the first Pentagon chief to testify before the panel since the war began and would make good on a vow he made to Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) before his confirmation.

Conrad and Sen. Judd Gregg (N.H.), the panel’s ranking Republican, wrote to Gates yesterday urging him to reschedule by March 1.
Gates’s decision not to appear comes less than a week after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) alarmed lawmakers by projecting that the president’s plan to increase troop numbers in Iraq could cost more than four times the $5.6 billion promised by the Bush administration.
“People deserve to hear from the secretary of defense on how he squares the dramatic differences in these estimates,” Conrad said in an interview, adding, “He told me in the confirmation process that he would come; now this news comes out and suddenly he’s unavailable.”

.....

In addition to the CBO’s cost estimate for the “surge,” which Gates disputed on Friday, Conrad and Gregg are concerned about the White House’s $623 billion 2008 defense budget. Though the White House agreed recently to bipartisan requests to include war costs in the annual budget, the 2008 request continues to treat Iraq costs as emergency expenses that have no effect on deficit projections.
The emergency tag is “unacceptable,” Gregg said at Tuesday’s budget hearing when news began circulating that Gates would not appear. “It is very clear, after five years of war, that it is not an emergency, that it is something that we have to do.”

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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a Budget panel member, said Gates’s decision not to appear reflected the administration’s “contempt for Congress.”
“It’s literally beyond comprehension,” Sanders said. “If they refuse to have the Secretary or staff come to defend their request, I will assume their figures are inaccurate and inflated and I will act accordingly.”
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), another panel member, lambasted Gates’s absence late Tuesday. “We spend over $8 billion dollars a month, $2 billion a week, $280 million every day, and $11.5 million an hour in Iraq. And to think we can’t get the Secretary of Defense to come before the Senate Budget Committee to justify it,” Menendez said in a statement. “That’s outrageous.”

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Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who is not a member of Budget, remarked that Gates “probably feels he’s testified before enough committees.”

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[dogday]

1. Let's see how long this will go on before

Alberto Gonzalez comes up with a legal way he doesn't have to testify...

[Javaman]

2. Just released...

Gates mute!!!

Washington D.C. - AP(10:45am)

CIA Chief Gates ordered to testify before the Senate Budget Committee has lost his voice.

Unable to utter a single word, phrase or sound, Mr. Gates has been given a note via his doctor that states clearly, that Mr. Gates through a mysterious and unexplained phenomenon, lost all his vocal cords.

Mr. Gates had no comment when pressed by this reporter.