I can’t wait to see what next year brings

There are times when I wish it was 2012. Not because I’m wishing my life away but because I’d love to see how today’s crop of politicians worked their way out of the worst financial crises in federal, state and local history.

In Washington, there’s a whole legion of no-taxes, smaller-government soldiers who have been elected to Congress and who have pledged to dismantle the American political system and teach us taxpayers a lesson or two.

The vast majority of the Tea Party-inspired Congress members are determined to repeal ObamaCare, as they call it, and reduce the size of government by at least $100 billion. They promise there will be no sacred cows, but they’re divided over cutting defense spending even though the Defense Department has offered up over $64 billion of voluntary cuts.

Some of them have proposed raising the age for Social Security benefits and even cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, but then their older colleagues told them they were playing with fire and some are backing off. What’s left to cut are the areas in which Americans of all ages would feel it the most.

The new crop of zealots has targeted the Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency. So does that mean less federal aid for college students, or relaxing air pollution standards, or maybe a repeal of the new food protection laws, signed just last year? There’s no doubt that home heating subsidies for the poor will be slashed, but why worry when most of those poor people don’t vote anyway?

So the big question is, What will Congress do to the federal budget, and who will suffer the most when the dust settles? For the record, I’m not a flaming liberal, and I believe the federal budget is very much in need of a trimming — with a scalpel, not an ax. But I’m intrigued by the slash-and-burn mentality of newly elected members who one day soon will again face the voters.

The pledge to do away with Congressional earmarks, also know as pork projects, is also quite amusing. There is discretionary money that gets spent locally, and the idea that there shouldn’t be any is quite comical. What will the Tea Party supporters brag about when 2012 rolls around? Getting rid of federal arts programs or public radio only gets a handful of votes.

New York state’s elected officials face the same dilemma. Just about every Republican and Democratic legislator has signed on to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s pledge to reduce the size of the state government. There is universal agreement that the state has a $10 billion budget deficit. So where do they start when applying the knife?

Upstate Republican legislators are dead set against closing the last few prisons on the grounds that they are the only real local employers. Long Island senators and Assembly members vehemently oppose reductions in school aid. City legislators want to preserve early education and hospital aid.

On Long Island, there is a bitter battle going on between Nassau County and the Nassau County Interim Finance Authority, the state monitoring agency known as NIFA. It has taken over some role in running the county but isn’t really running it.

The county is challenging NIFA in court, claiming it has no right to do anything.

The county has some kind of deficit, even though there is no agreement on how much. History tells us that a modest tax increase would help the county get out of the woods, but the county wants no tax increases. Former County Executive Tom Gulotta probably would have been re-elected if he’d had the nerve to push for one, but politics prevailed and he did nothing.

So that’s why I wish it were 2012, at least for a week or two. I’m anxious to see who will have the courage to do the right thing and who will go into hiding when the tough decisions are made.

Jerry Kremer was a state assemblyman for 23 years, and chaired the Assembly’s Ways and Means Committee for 12 years. He now heads Empire Government Strategies, a business development and legislative strategy firm. Comments below or write JKremer@liherald.com.