If it had passed, Paul's "Six-Penny Plan" would balance the budget within five years by cutting six pennies off every dollar the government spends. That translates to a $329 billion cut for the new fiscal year that begins on October 1—a fiscal year that seems likely to begin without a real budget having passed Congress. It would make the 2017 tax cuts permanent (and would account for the decline in future revenue that would result from that change), would preserve Social Security, and would otherwise leave Congress to determine the specifics.

"There is no free lunch. You can't have free college—somebody has to pay for it. There's no money up here," Paul said during a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday. "They're not giving you somebody else's money. They're not even taxing the rich. They're just borrowing it."

The most notable part of this thankless annual ritual of Paul's is not the results of the roll call vote, but the number of pennies that the senator asks his fellow lawmakers to trim. That's become a useful illustration of how out of whack the federal budget has gotten, and how much harder the task of bringing it into balance has become.