premise: If the personnel budget were to be cut by 38%, <hypo>, along with hundreds of others, thus helping confirm the growing conviction among smart young international-affairs grad students that joining the Foreign Service is a dumb career move.
hypothesis: <hypo> should be "presumably all of the 1,900 new Foreign Service officers Mr Obama and Hillary Clinton have recently finished hiring, as part of a strategic global re-emphasis on diplomacy rather than military force, will have to be fired"