The government has spent heavily to clean groundwater contaminated by toxic chemical spills  Yet not even one spill site has been completely cleaned, and industrial accidents are spilling more toxic chemicals annually than are being cleaned up  More of the government' s budget should be redirected to preventing spills
Since prevention is far more effective than cleanup, it makes little sense that the entire annual budget for prevention is less than the amount spent annually on one typical cleanup site
It is a presupposition on which the argument is explicitly based.