Mayor: The recycling program costs us nearly $1 million to operate every year, and our budget shortfall this year is projected to be $5 million. We need to cut the recycling program in order to help balance the budget.

Consumer Advocate: It costs the city more to throw something out than to recycle it.

CONSUMER says that RECYCLING would have cost lesser than not doing it but throwing garbage....

The consumer advocate responds to the mayor by

(A) establishing that the mayor's figures were incorrectly calculated....not really
(B) accepting the mayor's conclusion but questioning the legality of the plan.....does not accept the mayor's conclusion
(C) interpreting the mayor's evidence in a way that reduces the validity of the mayor's claimnot rally... instead gives new info on how the throwing costs higher...
(D) introducing a new piece of information that calls into question the validity of the mayor's conclusion......correct....the mayor had not considered this......
(E) pointing out that the mayor has not adequately considered the potential causes and effects of the budget shortfall.....no such thing has been suggested....


KUDOS IF YOU PLEASE......

IMO the answer is D.

The consumer advocate points out that cutting the recycling program will not lead to a balanced budget, since it will cost the city more not to recycle.

I actually Picked (a)..Please correct me..

Can someone advise why option 'C' is wrong.
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Hello sairam595,
In verbal answer are grey! In quant it is black or white!
As far as my understanding with the GMAT CR and the question at hand, I am summarizing why option C may be incorrect:

Argument:
Mayor: The recycling program costs us nearly $1 million to operate every year, and our budget shortfall this year is projected to be $5 million. We need to cut the recycling program in order to help balance the budget.
Consumer Advocate: It costs the city more to throw something out than to recycle it.

Question Stem:
The consumer advocate responds to the mayor by

(A)establishing that the mayor's figures were incorrectly calculated : No ESTABLISHING of any thing has happened here!

(B) accepting the mayor's conclusion but questioning the legality of the plan: No ACCEPTING has happened here!

(C) interpreting the mayor's evidence in a way that reduces the validity of the mayor's claim not rally:

Mayor provides evidence that budget shortfall this year is projected to be $5 million and recycling program costs nearly $1 million to conclude that cut recycling program to help balance the budget.

On the other hand, the consumer advocate says: cost of throwing > cost of recycling

Here, Blue part of mayor and red part of consumer advocate has no connection: one speaks about projected cost and recycling cost and other talks about cost comparision, a new and differnt thing. Therefore in option C no reduction of validity of mayor's claim is done! Hence, not a better answer choice.

(D) introducing a new piece of information that calls into question the validity of the mayor's conclusion:: Better than other choices at hand. A cost comparision is included that logically questions the validity of the mayor's conclusion.

(E) pointing out that the mayor has not adequately considered the potential causes and effects of the budget shortfall: cause and effects, nothing such has happened.
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For Describe the Argument questions, you have to address how some part of the argument is made: in this case, how the consumer advocate responds to the mayor. First, it sounds as if the advocate thinks that the mayor's plan isn't going to work since the advocate says that throwing stuff out is more costly than recycling it. If that's true, then the plan to cut the recycling program just got a bit worse—it might not actually achieve the ultimate goal, which is to save money and balance the budget.

State your goal briefly to yourself before going to the answer's:

The answer I find should indicate that the consumer advocate disagrees with the mayor specifically questioning whether the suggested action (cutting the recycling program) will result in the desired outcome (saving money, helping to balance the budget).

(A) The consumer advocate DOESN'T say anything about the mayor's figures—in fact, the advocate DOESN'T dispute the mayor's evidence AT ALL. Rather, the advocate attacks the mayor's assumption that cutting the program will lead to balancing the budget.
(B) The advocate doesn't accept the conclusion, nor does the advocate say anything about legality. Rather, the advocate questions whether the plan will really lead to saving money.
(C) Hmm. Maybe. The advocate does reduce the validity of the mayor's claim. I'm not 100% sure what “interpreting the evidence” means. I'll leave this in for now
(D) CORRECT. The advocate does call the mayor's conclusion into question, yes. Oh, I see—this one is better than answer (C) because the advocate does introduce a new piece of info (that it costs more to throw something away).
(E) This one is tricky. It's true that the mayor hasn't fully considered the potential effects of the plan to cut the recycling program—but that's not what this choice says. It talks about the causes and effects of the budget shortfall.
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Answer is Clearly D
as the D is introducing new information which is sending out the material is more costly than recycling so the idea of cutting recycling is actually not good for covering up the shortfalls. Therefore D