Critical Reasoning

Mayor: In each of the past five years, the city has cut school funding and each time school officials complained that the cuts would force them to reduce expenditures for essential services. But each time, only expenditures for nonessential services were actually reduced. So school officials can implement further cuts without reducing any expenditures for essential services.

Which of the following, if true, most strongly supports the mayor's conclusion?
(A) The city's schools have always provided essential services as efficiently as they have provided nonessential services.
(B) Sufficient funds are currently available to allow the city's schools to provide some nonessential services.
(C) Price estimates quoted to the city's schools for the provision of nonessential services have not increased substantially since the most recent school funding cut.
(D) Few influential city administrators support the funding of costly nonessential services in the city's schools.
(E) The city's school officials rarely exaggerate the potential impact of threatened funding cuts.


OA B

Yes B it is because it says some more fund for essential services is still left.

Premise: School officials are worried cuts would affect essential services.
Premise: In the past, only expenditures for nonessential services were reduced.

Conclusion: School officials can make cuts without reducing any expenditures for essential services.


B helps support the claim that nonessential services will be cut in order to spare essential services.

If the nonessential service funds were insufficient to begin with, school officials wouldn't be able to reduce them, meaning the cuts would have to come from somewhere else, possibly essential services. You can't cut something that's not there, and B states there is something there to cut, a fact which strengthens the conclusion.

Pretty Straight : B
They still have sufficient budget to provide non essential services. SO Cut will mostly likely cut some non essential services.

IMO B.

I guess this one is a OG question.

What are the implicatiions of A
Why are we rejecting A ?
I did chose B but i skipped A cos i couldnt grasp the impact that A would have on the Conclusion