Deficiency (and an alternate title for this puzzle)

Usage examples of shortfall.

As one aspect of their symbiotic affair, OPEC served the Mother Company by creating shortages when She wanted to build pipelines over fragile tundra, or block major governmental investment in research into solar and wind energy, or create natural gas shortfalls when pressing for removal of price controls.

The budget shortfalls of recent years have left us rather behind the times.

Big fights over those vines at the biotecture meetings, American ecologists screaming about possible nitrogen shortfalls.

And while this greatly improves our bond rating and the long-term economic outlook of the town, the net result is that in the short run, despite our belt-tightening, we are continuing to experience a revenue shortfall.

The drawdown of strategic missiles—mostly land-based ones for the United States—had radically reduced the number of available warheads, and, like planners everywhere, the Joint Strategic Targeting Staff, co-located with headquarters SAC, tried to make up for the shortfall in any way they could.

The Russians were pathetically dependent on American grain imports to make up the shortfalls on their own state farms.

If England's industrial output goes down, who'd step in to make up the shortfall?

He explained that the perp (they really do use that word) was operating exclusively in one-horse towns where budget shortfalls have forced the cops to deal only with the most serious and immediate problems .

Anti-tax crusader Richard Friedman says an MDTA study forecasts that, even with $466 million in committed subsidies, Dade's entire transit program will suffer a $148 million shortfall between now and 1999.