Poor U.S. Math Skills and a Balanced U.S. Budget

Poor U.S. math skills allow frantic hyperbole by politicians...film at 11 (or maybe 12?).

Lately, the republican and democratic parties have played political badminton with two items each thinks should be cut from the annual federal budget. The democrats want the $4 billion tax breaks to the big oil companies stopped, and the republicans want the money to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting stopped. Everyone is screaming about a balanced budget, but no one seems to be able to figure it out. Well, I'm no genius, but I'm going to give it a shot.

Here are the official numbers for the United States 2012 Federal Budget

CATEGORY                      REQUESTED       ENACTED
Total Revenue                 $2.627 trillion     $2.469 trillion
Total Expenditures           $3.729 trillion     $3.796 trillion
Deficit                            $1.101 trillion     $1.327 trillion

The $445 million to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is 0.01175 percent of Total Expenditures.

The $4 billion in tax breaks to big oil is 0.1055 percent of Total Expenditures.

Some context:
Defense budget: $676 billion
State Department budget for Afghanistan: $2.3 billion
State Department budget for Iraq: $1.0 billion
Amtrak federal capital grants and operating subsidies: $1.4 billion
Federal office space acquisition budget: $864 million

For you math weenies, here’s what should have happened...

The government should have taken the amount of Total Revenue Enacted and divided it by the amount of Total Expenditures Enacted. This gives us a percentage of 65%. Then, they should have then reduced EACH AND EVERY single line item in the budget by 40%, which would have given us a balanced budget for 2012, and left over 5% ($123.5 B) to begin reducing the national debt.

This would result in...
Defense budget: $405.6 billion
State Department budget for Afghanistan: $1.38 billion
State Department budget for Iraq: $600 million
Amtrak federal capital grants and operating subsidies: $840 million
Federal office space acquisition budget: $518.4 million

and...
Corporation for Public Broadcasting: $267 million
Tax breaks to big oil: $2.4 billion

Seems really simple to me. How about you?