I was curious if the word 'BECUASE' can ever be used to

Is it E.

No it is not E. My original question is more about the recognition of conclusions rather than trying to determine the answer

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Good question. "Because" indicates a rationale and thus a premise, not a conclusion:

"The Dodgers will win BECAUSE they have better players." --> "They have better players" is a premise.
"BECAUSE you are my friend, I will loan you five dollars." --> "You are my friend" is a premise.

You could have the following:

"My sister hates cheese and tomatoes. Because of that, she probably won't like pizza."

Here, the conclusion is that my sister won't like pizza (even though that sentence starts with "because.") This is acceptable because "because of that" refers to the premise in the prior sentence and "she probably won't like pizza" is an independent clause that follows.

Conclusions often start with "thus" , "therefore" , or a synonym.

That help?

Brett

Here ‘because more money is available’ is rather a premise and not part of the conclusion per se; the conclusion will be “(therefore) more money becomes available to borrowers.” The conclusion -marker “therefore” has been intentionally dropped to befuddle the test taker.

Incidentally, for those interested, the answer must be A, which directly addresses tax savings schemes and implies that the money available to businesses may not go up after all

Hey jscott,

Great question - on Strengthen/Weaken questions you want to first identify the conclusion that you're supporting/attacking, so please do make that an emphasis. The four common ways to determine a conclusion are to look for:

1) Conclusion language like “thus” or “therefore”

2) A call for action, such as “we should…” or “they must…”

3) The effect of a cause-and-effect relationship. For example, “Because it is raining, the parade will be canceled.” The parade being canceled is a conclusion dependent on the rain.

4) The “Why” test. The “Why” test dictates that CR arguments are comprised of only two things: facts and conclusions. And conclusions need to be based on facts. If you ask “why is that true” of a statement, and realize that the paragraph gives no attempt at a reason for it, that statement must be given as a fact – no reason is necessary. But if a reason is given – if you can point to another sentence after asking “why,” then the statement that depends on another is likely the conclusion.

If you want to break this process down with an example, I recommend this blog post: https://www.veritasprep.com/blog/2010/11/gmat-tip-of-the-week-jump-to-conclusions/

Now, on this question, it's actually not a straight Weaken question - this is one that involves a plan or strategy. On Plan/Strategy questions, the "objective" is the "conclusion" - your job isn't to weaken an argument, but rather to demonstrate that the government's plan won't likely reach its objective.

So here, you'd want to use "to help businesses (who are hamstrung by a lack of available loan money)" as the "conclusion". The government aims to do that by cutting personal taxes so that people invest more and that money becomes available. As daagh notes, A weakens that plan by showing that individual consumers will borrow that increase in available loan funding, meaning that the plan won't actually increase the pool available "to help businesses".