NY’s budget numbers are game-changers

State officials say New York’s budget deficit is poised to mushroom to $45 billion by 2013. That means carving out $3.2 billion this year, and another $7 billion next year.

And things just continue to get worse from there. What’s more, there’s little likelihood of another Federal stimulus to bail us out.

What does this mean for New York and its people? It means we have a very short time to figure out what exactly we want state government to do for us.

The full a la carte menu of services we now enjoy? Forget it. That’s all over. Every conceivable interest group will suffer.

Social contracts that seemed graven in stone will be torn up. Tiny rural school districts will vanish. Subsidies to small towns will dwindle.

Yes, some prisons will close. A whole lot of workers will be laid off.

The generous wages and benefits enjoyed by millions of government workers — state and local — will be squeezed painfully.

The real question is whether New York’s political infrastructure has the muscle and flexibility to guide these changes, shaping them to minimize pain and disruption.

Will state employee unions bend? Will thousands of special interest groups acknowledge that the long gilded age is over? Will taxpayers pony up a little more?

No one solution will do it. No sacred cow will go unslaughtered. Politicians who promise otherwise? They’re playing by the old rules.

But old habits die hard. I’m guessing that we’ll make these big changes in the way that democracies often do, clumsily, as emergencies rise, as bills come due that we literally can’t pay.

On the other hand, maybe we’ll exceed expectations as a society. Maybe we’ll reinvent ourselves, get leaner, make some smart choices.

What do you think? Business as usual? Or time to brace for real change?