Recent litigation and congressional enactments have served to spotlight a relatively new and little considered statutory mechanism which attempts to inject congressional oversight into the process of formulating the President's annual budget request. This mechanism, which has appeared as an appendage to certain environmental legislation,¹ requires the President, when requesting congressional appropriations for programs established by such statutes, to provide a "statement of reasons" explaining in detail whether the level of funding requested meets the target levels set out in the legislation. If the appropriation request envisions less than full achievement of the statutory goals, the President must also explain why other national objectives have been assigned a higher budgetary priority.

Outwardly such provisions would appear to require merely the transmission of the same information congressional committees routinely receive via the massive federal budgetary statement and the subsequent testimony of agency representatives. But the innocuous facade belies a larger purpose. The apparent intent behind such provisions is to elicit from the Chief Executive a detailed explanation of the political horse-trading that underlies a particular aspect of the budget request. Where congressionally authorized programs to manage better the nation's natural resources have been whittled away by the President, full justification must be presented publicly, much in the way of "dirty laundry."