Hitting pothole not your fault - pothole blame belongs to local government problems with roads and this is your story. You filled out accident report and leave it at that. If Budget calls back blame horrible road conditions; tell them you installed back up tire and did what you could to return car. Not to worry chstr... this sort of thing happens more frequently than you know.
Oh for
crying out loud. Does your anti-government rhetoric have to extend to
everything including people having rental car mishaps??
To the OP: I had this happen on a family road trip last year. Didn't damage the rim, but the rental car we were given had what looked like two very worn front tires. (Don't anybody blame me -- I didn't make the rental. And of course the guy who did didn't get insurance.) Sure enough, one tire blew out in the city in New Jersey. When we talked to the rental company, we were told we'd have to replace the tire with the same specific kind, and we had to drive quite a ways to find a tire store that had one in stock. On the way back, in the middle of Nowhere, Pennsylvania, the other front tire blew. Again, we had to drive quite a bit out of our way to find that specific tire.
In the latter incident, the hubcap blew off and rolled down a steep embankment. We were
not about to get out and climb down (with no rope) to try to rescue something that was surely damaged. Well, the company (Alamo) gave us grief about
that.
I gave them plenty of grief about letting the car go out to a customer with two almost-bald tires.
I tell you this story to illustrate that ItN doesn't know what he's talking about if he thinks the rental company is going to simply accept some story about "bad government potholes".

And to warn you (for future use) that just going
anywhere to get repairs or tire replacement might very well not be acceptable to the rental company.