Identify criticisms of program budgeting.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Technically, applying PPBS successfully required a great deal of time and effort, as well as an almost certain knowledge of unknown relationships of spending to program success. The systems concept inherent in the method implies that if one aspect of the system is altered, the entire system must be rethought. That may mean that program budgeting actually institutionalizes the rigidity that it was designed to eliminate. Also, it is difficult if not impossible to define programs, measure their results, and evaluate the contributions of individual agencies and activities to the achievement of those results. The difficulty of measuring the effects of government is one of the major problems in public policy analysis, and such measurement occupies a central place in program budgeting. Program budgeting also had several political disadvantages. The program budgeting method forced decisions to a higher level of government. Agencies disliked this centralizing tendency, as did Congress members who had invested considerable effort in developing relationships with clientele groups supporting agencies. Moreover, the assumption that organizations are not the most appropriate objects of allocation ran counter to all the folkways of American government. Finally, the need to analyze systematically alternative strategies for achieving ends forced agencies to expose their programs to possible attack, as they might develop and eliminate alternative programs that others might prefer, and the explicit nature of the process brought those alternatives up for active consideration.