Rand Paul wants to eliminate the Federal Departments of Education, Energy and Commerce.
That's something like: $64 Billion at Education, $26 Billion at Energy, and $22 Billion at Commerce. $112 Billion or thereabouts; and that's just regular budgeting, not counting tens of billions more in supplemental funding being sluiced through these Departments from the Stimulus Act funds.
Proposing $112 Billion in cuts from the regular budget, as his opening salvo, is not really a bad start.
In other words he's not serious. His plan, even if it was approved, would reduce the deficit by about 7%. Unless he talks about tackling entitlements then he's no different from any other politician who says they'll slash the size of government in the hopes that the voters are dumb enough to believe them.