Commissioner: Budget forecasters project a revenue shortfall of a billion dollars in the coming fiscal year.
Conclusion (therefore)
We'll be able to solve the problem we face only if we adopt this plan.
rephrase: If we don't adopt this plan of feasible cuts that would yield savings of a billion dollars over the coming fiscal year, we will not be able to deal with our billion dollar revenue shortfall.
Evidence
There's no way to increase funding, so we'll have to decrease expenditures.
This plan includes cuts that would yield saving of a billion dollars over the next fiscal year.
Evaluate
Whenever we're doing a Flaw question and the conclusion involves extreme wording, we should be very suspicious that the conclusion is stronger than it should be.
In this case, we have a conditional logic term only if.
Usually, when we see conditional logic on Flaw, there's a conditional logic rule in the Evidence and the author incorrectly applies it in a backwards or opposite fashion en route to the Conclusion (that's the #1 famous flaw, Necessary vs. Sufficient).
Is there any conditional logic in the evidence here? No, but there is a comparably extreme idea: our only choice is to decrease expenditures.
We could think of the argument boiling down to this reasoning move: We will be able to solve the budget shortfall only if we decrease expenditures. Thus, we will be able to solve the budget shortfall only if we adopt this plan.
What sort of assumption is being made there?
It's assuming . Did the author ever convince us of that?
No. She said this plan would decrease expenditures, but she never established that it's the only way to decrease expenditures.
So in a sense, this argument is making a Necessary vs. Sufficient error. The author has established that this plan is one possible, sufficient way to decrease expenditures. But the conclusion is acting like this plan is the only, and thus the required, way to decrease expenditures.
Goal
Whenever authors are arguing, , the author is assuming 1. action Y would help solve problem X 2. there aren't other actions that would also solve problem X
This author convinces us her plan would help solve the budget shortfall (#1) but never convinces us that her plan is the only way to decrease expenditures (#2).