The rhetoric from Washington this week inspired this thought: Our biggest national problem is the same problem your school board faces. It’s the same problem you may have faced at some time.

School boards struggle with annual budgets. When there is not enough money they have to make cuts. They usually cut – or threaten to cut – the sports program. Or other popular programs. The reason they do is that they don’t have many other options. In truth, they control only a small portion of the budget. The rest of the budget the state and federal government’s control. The state in particular.

The state tells schools what they must do in a host of areas. These are called mandates. The mandates may be forcing the school to spend more and more. And that spending may be killing local taxpayers. But the school board cannot stop the mandates. They are locked into the spending the mandates call for. The mandates eat up most of their budget.

You may have had a similar problem. You have a huge mortgage. And a huge credit card bill. And maybe a home improvement loan. And now you find there is not enough money to pay your bills every month.

Now you can cut down on your other spending. But that will not solve your problem. Your problem is that the mortgage, loan and credit card payments eat up most of your budget.

Washington has the same problem. Mandates eat up most of the budget.

The President can talk all night about freezing spending for five years. He can brag about saving money here and there. He can pretend that his guys will root out waste. (Right, Mr. President.)

All this is like the school board cutting out the basketball program. It’s like you switching from steak to hamburger to balance your home budget. It ignores the basic problem. The basic problem is that once Washington pays for the mandates, there ain’t much left to tinker with.