Pentagon Asks Senate Panel to Wait on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ - POTUS to address at SOTU

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Pentagon Asks Senate Panel to Wait on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

The Obama administration has asked the Senate Armed Services Committee to delay hearings on the fate of the military’s controversial “con’t ask, don’t tell” policy, because the president expects to discuss it in Wednesday’s address to Congress, the committee chairman said today.

Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat and chairman of the committee, told reporters that senior Pentagon officials asked him to postpone the hearings, because they do not want to be put in the position of discussing or defending a policy that the White House might abandon.

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“Somebody representing the Pentagon said that the White House, that the president was expected, they thought, to state that policy at the State of the Union; and they thought it made more sense for him to state the policy than for us to have a hearing right before,’’ Mr. Levin said, according to a transcript of the conversation provided by his office.

Mr. Levin, who said he did not favor the policy even when it was enacted, said he intends to hold hearings next month. He said he does not know what Mr. Obama might say in Wednesday’s address.

The White House declined comment.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/pentagon-asks-senate-panel-to-wait-on-dont-ask-dont-tell/?src=twt&twt=thecaucus