Editorial: When legislators discover that

Answer choices

1. A

   Correct78% picked this

   The least efficiently run government bureaucracies are the bureaucracies that legislators most commonly discover to be failing to

   Why this is right

   This looks good. It connects #1 and #2 in our causal chain. The Overlapping Ingredient in both claims was "a boost/increase in funding", which means that the author is implicitly connecting the other ideas in each claim, "legislators discovering a public service is not being adequately provided" and "least efficiently run government bureaucracies".

   Skill tested: Most Supported · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

   78%
2. B

   Too Strong: never3% picked this

   When legislators discover that a public service is not being adequately provided, they never respond to the problem by reducing the funding of

   The language in the stimulus is about "the most common response". There is nothing absolute that would allow us to justify never.

   3%
3. C

   Too Strong: throughout / repeatedly11% picked this

   Throughout the time a government bureaucracy is run inefficiently, legislators repeatedly boost the funding for the public service

   We have a specific Trigger idea that usually leads to a boost in funding: legislators discover a public service not being adequately provided. So in order for this answer to make sense, we'd have to think to ourselves, "Throughout the time a government bureaucracy is run inefficiently, legislators are repeatedly discovering that a public service is not being adequately provided". That's too big a leap to make. This answer is also making a Relative vs. Absolute switch. It might be that ALL bureaucracies are run inefficiently. This paragraph was specifically talking about those run least efficiently.

   11%
4. D

   Unsupported Causal Connection4% picked this

   If legislators boost funding for a public service, the government bureaucracy providing that service will commonly become less

   We don't have any grounds for thinking that "more funding ? less efficient". The gist of the paragraph is that there's some unfortunate irony that the worst-run programs end up getting money the most, but there was never an implication that getting money is what makes them the worst-run.

   4%
5. E

   Too Strong: most funding4% picked this

   The most inefficiently run government bureaucracy receives the most funding of

   We only know that the most inefficiently run bureaucracies are the ones most likely to receive funding, but this is saying they are the ones likely to receive the most funding. No information in the paragraph deals with the comparative magnitude of how much funding this or that bureaucracy gets. It could be that the military's bureaucracy, despite being one of the more efficiently run bureaucracies, receives the most funding, simply because the overall budget for the military dwarfs the budget for all other bureaucracies.

   4%