Critical Reasoning

Editorial: Our city's public transportation agency is facing a budget shortfall. The fastest growing part of the budget has been employee retirement benefits, which are exceptionally generous. Unless the budget shortfall is resolved, transportation service will be cut, and many transportation employees will lose their jobs. Thus, it would be in the employees' best interest for their union to accept cuts in retirement benefits.

Which of the following is an assumption the editorial's argument requires?

(A) The transportation employees' union should not accept cuts in retirement benefits if doing so would not be in the employees' best interest.
(B) The only feasible way for the agency to resolve the budget shortfall would involve cutting transportation service and eliminating jobs.
(C) Other things being equal, it is in the transportation employees' interest to have exceptionally generous retirement benefits.
(D) Cutting the retirement benefits would help resolve the agency's budget shortfall.
(E) The transportation employees' union will not accept cuts in retirement benefits if doing so will not allow more transportation employees to keep their jobs.

Experts can you please tell why option B is wrong.

Here is my line of thinking


What is my conclusion?

Taking cuts in retirement benefits which are generous will help us with extra funds that can be used for transportation budget shortfall.

Now option B is not attacking this conclusion.Its not touching the specifics of conclusion..rather its just talking about ways to curb budget shortfall and doesnt talk about how reducing retirement benefits will help curb the shortfall in transportation budget shortfall at all.There can be other ways of budget shortfall apart from cutting transportation service and eliminating jobs. Say may be selling their vehicles
or other infra assets.But ,it doesn't touch the conclusion reducing retirement benefits will help curtail transportation budget shortfall.

Another way to look a it.(NEGATION)

Lets negate option B.

The only feasible way for the agency to resolve the budget shortfall would involve cutting transportation service and eliminating jobs
Negation :There are other feasible way for the agency to resolve the budget shortfall which would not involve cutting transportation service and eliminating jobs

Ask the question: Does the negated choice shatter the conclusion that retirement benefts should be cut to make up for the transportation budget shortfall.

No..We are not concerned about other ways .We are just focusing on the specifics of conclusion how reducing retirements benefits will affect..

The point is B may a strengthener but the argument can live without it .(Assumptions cant be could be true)

The negation of (B) is that 'there is some other way to fix the budget'.
But even if there is some other way, the management might still choose to cut jobs.
Since this is not a 'strict negation', i.e. the argument can still stand (if a bit weaker) without it, it is not a 'GMAT assumption'.

Negating (D), however, yields 'cutting the benefits would not fix the budget'.
Without this, the entire argument that 'workers should accept benefit cuts so as to fix the budget' is negated.
Then (D) is a much stronger choice.

Note that in general, the best way to avoid getting tripped up by confusing almost-right answers is to try identify in advance what the weakest link / correct answer likely is.
If it (or something very similar) is in your answer choices, you should feel comfortable selecting it without thinking deeply about every single one of the options.