Read my lips….. HE IS A TOOL…..HE LIES……JUST LIKE THE REST OF THEM! You rubberstamped him……now here’s what you get.

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.”

Lt. Col. Brian Maka, a Department of Defense (DoD) spokesman, offered a different version of events, stating that Deputy Secretary Gordon England had been scheduled to testify at Senate Budget, as he already has done at the House Budget Committee.

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.

Read more at the Hill