cr-hw-10-9

Donodyne Inc. has decided to offer severance packages to many of their senior employees and to promote junior employees into executive positions, with only slight increases in the junior employee's salaries. Questions have been raised about whether the company can thus determine that this plan will save money for Donodyne, because for any given position, the cost to the company of the severance package will be less than the amount that the company will save by paying a reduced salary. This surely will be the case, because the severance package is a one-time cost, while the money saved by paying a salary that is only slightly higher than that paid to a current junior Donodyne employee will continue to accrue for each year in which a newly promoted senior employee works at a lower salary than that at which an old senior employee would have worked.

In the argument above, what are the roles of the two boldfaced portions of the text?

A
The first names the content of the conclusion of the argument; the second provides evidence to support that conclusion.
B
The first supports the conclusion of the argument; the second identifies the content of that conclusion.
C
The first states evidence to support the conclusion of the argument; the second is a counterexample brought up to call the conclusion of the argument into question.
D
The first names one of two conclusions named in the argument; the second calls this first conclusion into question by raising an overlooked possibility.
E
Both the first and the second are provided as evidence to support the conclusion of the argument.