Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Jeffrey Zients, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), speaks during a news conference on April 10, 2013.

That’s how much President Barack Obama’s budget proposal would trim federal budget deficits over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Obama’s budget would produce deficits of $5.2 trillion between fiscal 2014 and fiscal 2023, compared with $6.3 trillion under the CBO’s baseline projections, the nonpartisan budget agency said in a report May 17.

Obama’s proposals would increase the deficit in this fiscal year and in the next two, relative to the amounts the CBO projects in its baseline. The deficits would be smaller than the baseline figures between 2016 to 2023, ranging between 0.1 percent and 1.4 percent of gross domestic product.

The CBO last week projected a fiscal 2013 deficit of $642 billion, or 4 percent of GDP, the smallest shortfall in five years. The deficit was 10.1 percent of GDP in fiscal 2009.

The policy changes in Obama’s budget would increase revenues by $974 billion and reduce outlays by $172 billion, according to the CBO report. The biggest policy changes include reducing military spending in Afghanistan, limiting deductions that lower taxpayers’ income tax liability, and changing the way some benefit programs are indexed for inflation by adopting a “chained” consumer price index.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: $1.1 Trillion by Political Capital.

Photograph by Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg

Customers shop at a Macy’s Inc. store in New York.

That’s the Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index for the week ended May 12.

The index, which is based on Americans’ opinions about the economy, the buying climate and their own finances, fell from minus 29.5 in the prior week. It can range from plus 100 to minus 100.

In a separate monthly gauge of economic expectations, 32 percent said the economy is getting worse and 31 percent said it’s getting better. The minus 1 reading was the best in five months and rose from minus 4 in April.

“Rising home values and stock prices gains may be underpinning expectations and bolstering consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the economy,” Bloomberg’s Jeanne Smialek reported yesterday. “Nonetheless, the lagged effect of higher payroll taxes are crimping the discretionary budgets of low- to middle-wage earners, preventing total demand from accelerating.”

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: -30.2 by Political Capital.

Photograph by Rainier Ehrhardt/AP Photo

Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford arrives to give his victory speech on May 7, 2013, in Mt. Pleasant, S.C. Sanford won back his old congressional seat in the state’s 1st District in a special election.

That’s how many U.S. House members in the current 113^th Congress have served non-consecutive tenures.

The total includes Mark Sanford, a South Carolina Republican who was sworn in yesterday to the House, where he previously served from 1995 to 2001. Sanford was South Carolina’s governor from 2003 to 2011.

Sanford won a special election on May 7, beating Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch in a Republican-tilting district in and around Charleston that includes much of the territory he previously represented.

Sanford is one of seven House Republicans now serving a second stint in the House, along with Reps. Steve Chabot of Ohio, Steve Pearce of New Mexico, Matt Salmon of Arizona, Mike Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Tim Walberg of Michigan and Steve Stockman of Texas.

Sanford, Chabot, Salmon and Stockman were all members of the big House Republican freshman class of 1994, when the party won control of the chamber for the first time in four decades.

The nine Democrats who have served non-consecutive terms are Reps. David Price of North Carolina, Jim Cooper of Tennessee, Richard Nolan of Minnesota, Bill Foster of Illinois, Carol Shea-Porter of New Hampshire, Alan Grayson of Florida, Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona, Dan Maffei of New York and Dina Titus of Nevada.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 16 by Political Capital.

Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Copies of the Obama Administration’s proposed FY 2014 federal budget at the Government Printing Office Book Store on April 10, 2013 in Washington, DC.

That’s the projected budget deficit for fiscal 2013, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

That projection is about $200 billion below the $845 billion estimate that CBO released in February. The decrease is “mostly as a result of higher-than-expected revenues and an increase in payments to the Treasury by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” CBO said in a report yesterday.

Revenues have “increased robustly so far this year in part because of the expiration of the 2 percentage-point payroll tax cut in January 2013,” the report said.

The fiscal 2013 deficit is projected to be 4 percent of gross domestic product, compared with 10.1 percent in fiscal 2009, when the economy was in the deepest recession since World War II.

The CBO document provides “great news about this year,” though it “doesn’t say very much about the long-term fiscal outlook” because the “main factors cutting this year’s deficits are one-time effects,” Bloomberg View’s Josh Barro wrote yesterday in the Ticker.

Under current law, the deficit will fall to 2.1 percent of GDP in fiscal 2015 before rising later in the decade “because of the pressures of an aging population, rising health care costs, an expansion of federal subsidies for health insurance, and growing interest payments on federal debt,” the CBO report said.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: $642 Bln by Political Capital.

Photograph by Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo

Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf is reflected on a table as he speaks about the office’s annual Budget and Economic Outlook during a news conference at the Ford House Office Building in Washington.

That’s how much the federal budget deficit fell in the first seven months of fiscal year 2013 compared to the same period a year earlier.

The government ran a deficit of $489 billion from October 2012 to April 2013 on receipts of $1.603 trillion and outlays of $2.092 trillion, the Congressional Budget Office said in a May 7 report.

That compares to a deficit of $720 billion over the first seven months of fiscal 2012, a period when the government took in $1.383 trillion and spent $2.103 trillion, CBO data show.

The deficit fell by $231 billion, or 32 percent, “primarily because revenue collections have been much greater than they were at this point in 2012,” the CBO said. “In contrast, federal spending so far this year has been slightly lower than what it was last year at this time.”

Rising receipts and the automatic government spending cuts known as sequestration together are “undermining the favorite tax-and-spending arguments of both Republicans and Democrats,” Bloomberg’s David Lynch reported yesterday.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 32% by Political Capital.

Photograph by by John Moore/Getty Images

A bilingual sign stands outside a polling center in Texas.

That’s the share of eligible Hispanics who voted in the 2012 presidential election.

The voter turnout rate among Hispanics — a burgeoning bloc that leans Democratic — fell from 49.9 percent in 2008, when President Barack Obama won his first term.

The 2012 voter turnout rate for Hispanics compared to 66.2 percent for black voters, 64.1 percent for non-Hispanic whites and 47.3 percent for Asians, according to a report the Census Bureau released last week.

While Hispanic voters in Colorado, Florida, Nevada and other states helped re-elect Obama, the Census report underscored how that bloc hasn’t realized its full potential in elections. Hispanics have lower rates of citizenship and voter registration and participation than non-Hispanic whites.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 48% by Political Capital.

Photograph by Stefan Rousseau/Pool

German Federal Minister of Finance, Wolfgang Schauble, left, Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, center, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde, and Canadian Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty during a question answer session on the challenges facing the global economy at the the Global Investment Conference in London on May 9, 2013.

That’s the number of global interest-rate cuts since June 2007.

The Group of Seven finance ministers and central bank governors — from the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan — will meet today and tomorrow in Buckinghamshire, England, to discuss the global economy.

Some economists are “predicting policy makers will keep deploying stimulus amid weak global growth, slowing inflation and the need to thwart currency gains,” Bloomberg’s Simon Kennedy and Jennifer Ryan report here.

The finance heads will discuss “how to nurture the recovery,” George Osborne, the U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer, said in London yesterday, Bloomberg’s Gonzalo Vina reported.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 511 by Political Capital.

Photograph by Julie Denesha/Getty Images

Eileen Woofford, 84, waited in line to cast her vote at Cleveland Avenue Baptist Church on November 6, 2012 in Kansas City, Missouri.

That’s the share of black voters eligible to vote in the 2012 presidential election who cast a ballot.

Blacks outvoted non-Hispanic whites, who had a 64.1 percent turnout rate, according to a Census Bureau report released yesterday. It’s the first time blacks voted at a higher rate than whites since before 1996, when the bureau began publishing statistics on the eligible voters.

Blacks outvoted whites amid the re-election of President Barack Obama, the nation’s first black chief executive.

The share of all eligible citizens who voted fell to 61.8 percent in 2012 from 63.6 percent in 2008, Census data show.

Bloomberg’s John McCormick has more here.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 66.2% by Political Capital.

Photograph by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

A trader on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange at the end of the trading day on May 7, 2013.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 15,056.2 by Political Capital.

Photograph by Richard Ellis/Getty Images

Republican candidate for the open Congressional seat of South Carolina, Former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, greets U.S. House of Representatives Democratic candidate for the state of South Carolina Elizabeth Colbert Busch following their debate at the Citadel on April 29, 2013 in Charleston.

That’s the share of the vote Republican Mitt Romney received last year in South Carolina’s 1^st District, which is hosting a special House election today (read about that race and the broader fight for control of the House here).

The Republican tilt of the district (map), which includes Hilton Head and part of Charleston, is the biggest advantage for that party’s nominee, Mark Sanford, a former governor and congressman who’s seeking a political comeback.

Republicans are linking Democratic nominee Elizabeth Colbert Busch, a business development official and an older sister of comedian Stephen Colbert, to national Democratic figures including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California. Colbert Busch regularly refers to herself as a “tough, independent businesswoman.”

Democrats have called attention to Sanford’s acknowledgement of an extramarital affair as governor in 2009, when he left the state unannounced for Argentina to visit a woman who’s now his fiancee.

While Colbert Busch had more money going for her in her campaign,  the latest poll portrayed a race too close to call.

Sanford and Colbert Busch are vying to succeed Republican Tim Scott, who’s now a senator.

Polling stations close at 7 p.m. EDT tonight.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 58% by Political Capital.