Now Rand Paul has promised to vote against and filibuster any budget that isn't balanced. Steve Benen notes:

At face value, this is a pretty absurd position to take. Putting aside the fact that there are plenty of circumstances in which running deficits is the smart, responsible thing to do, there's the small matter of the trillion-dollar deficit Republicans left for Democrats to clean up. This year, the deficit will be about $1.3 trillion -- almost exactly the size of the budget shortfall George W. Bush bequeathed to the Obama administration. In order for Paul's pledge to make sense, the right-wing ophthalmologist would have to believe Congress can, as early as 2011, close a $1.3 trillion budget gap in one year. And since that couldn't possibly include tax increases, Rand Paul would like to see a budget next year that cuts $1.3 trillion all at once.

John Boehner wants to cut discretionary federal spending by around $100 billion in one year. That, says the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, would amount to 22%, according to Jon Cohn.

Okay, math wasn't my strong suit, or maths weren't my strong suits as you prefer, but: If $100 billion is 22% of something, then $1.3 trillion would appear to be well more than 100% of it. "Something" is $455 billion to be precise. So $1.3 trillion would be more or less impossible, without, say, disbanding the US armed forces, which position I doubt Paul really wants to endorse on closer inspection.

But that's not even the worst of it. Paul will filibuster a budget that isn't balanced. But under Senate rules you can't filibuster a budget. It's one of the few categories of bill placed off limits to the filibuster, since 1975.

He's an idiot. So many of these people are just disgraceful idiots. Some number of them - Paul, Sharron Angle, Joe Miller, maybe others - are actually going to become United States senators. They won't know the first thing about the job or the institution. Go ahead, some of you, say: that's exactly what we need. But in fact it just means they'll be stupid and ineffectual and will embarrass the state they represent by going on national television and saying idiotic things like Paul just said.

They'll get to the Senate and they'll see that you can't just go snap! and end abortion or decimate the budget or get rid of whatever manifestation of socialism is in your bonnet that week. They will see further that actual constituents, human beings with needs from the hated government, will require their services. They will be disasters. But they will also have enough p.r. machinery behind them that stories demonstrating what disasters they in fact have become will of course be written off as so much liberal propaganda.

