This speech presents issues and questions to be considered in deciding the relevance of program budgeting. Areas of consideration include identifying objectives, determining program costs, measuring learning outcomes, determining the contributions of the school and the program to learning outcomes, the effects of the beliefs of personnel on the success of PPBS, and the political implications of PPBS. Major points are as follows: 1) identifying objectives that accurately reflect the goals of the organization is a time-consuming process, 2) the effective determination of the costs of programs depends on the cooperation and commitment of personnel at the school level, 3) current analysis practices are inadequate to determine the contributions of the various components of the learning environment to learning outcomes, 4) high risk and high-cost programs are desirable if PPBS is to help identify ways of doing things better or faster, and 5) better decisions are not likely to result from PPBS unless the policy-makers maintain a stable policy position. (Author/DW)