We could, the Assembly leader says, raise the gasoline tax. Another lawmaker wants to allow recreational marijuana and tax it. Someone else suggests an Internet sales tax.

Gov. Cuomo pushes a Manhattan congestion tax. A state senator wants to soak the rich who buy expensive second homes in New York.

The budget director surveys the lucrative offerings, adds up the estimated haul and says the total probably still wouldn’t be enough to fund borrowing for the five-year, $40 billion capital plan for mass transit.

Welcome to Albany, where a series of casual trial balloons passes for serious decision-making. And all the money in the world will never be enough.

The impact on those who would have to fork over the dough — not important. Whatever government needs, it takes.

Notice what else is missing: any mention of spending less on anything. Is every single program in the state budget of $180 billion absolutely essential? Could maybe just one agency do more with less?

Outrageous! Have you no compassion!

You also don’t hear serious talk about reforms, in the sense that cost savings in one area could be used to fix the subways. The subways are absolutely critical, we’re told repeatedly, but apparently not critical enough that any existing funds could be shifted to them. All the money must be new.

There is no talk of reform because there are no reformers in Albany. If there is a single one, he or she has not been heard from.

It used to be said reformers went there to do good and stayed to do well. Now, to judge by the results, reformers don’t go to Albany at all.

New York state is in trouble and all the proposals would throw gasoline on the bonfire. The state leads the nation in population loss, and thanks to the federal limits on the deduction of state and local taxes, the steady exodus of high earners and middle-class families threatens to become a stampede to lower-tax states.

In response, Albany, now run entirely by left-wing Democrats, devotes its waking hours considering only which taxes to raise.

This is suicide, like playing Russian roulette with a bullet in every chamber. The results are guaranteed.

A few numbers to consider. The state spent $22,366 per pupil in public schools in 2016 — 90 percent above the national average, the US Census Bureau said last year.

State school aid to localities grew by 36 percent between 2012 and 2018 — yet it’s not enough.

New York City now spends over $24 billion on schools — or about $24,000 per student. The only question is how much more will it get this year.

None of the taxes under consideration is a good idea, but the congestion tax is the worst. There is absolutely no promise that charging vehicles astronomical fees to enter Midtown south of 61st Street would have any measurable impact on the arteries clogged not just by cars and trucks, but by bicycle lanes, pedestrian plazas and construction.

Yet by definition, by saying they want fewer vehicles in Midtown, the pols are effectively labeling congestion pricing a sin tax.

Like ultra-high taxes on tobacco and alcohol, or like the sugar tax Michael Bloomberg pushed, sin taxes are designed to make the activity involved so expensive that some people will stop.

But if a congestion tax is successful, and fewer people drive into Midtown, there would be fewer dollars for the subways.

So the tax, which would start at about $12 a day for a car and $25 for a truck, would have to be raised to make up for the quitters. Presumably a higher tax would disincentivize others from driving, so the tax would have to be raised again, and the spiral would be endless.

And what of other implications? While some drivers may opt for mass transit, which is allegedly the goal, others may skip the city altogether.

What’s the economic impact on theaters, restaurants and retailers of government taking $1 billion more per year out of the private economy? How about the impact on real estate if there is a pied-á-terre tax?

Would any of this make New York more or less affordable, and for whom? And how big is too big for government?

All you hear is that the subways need lots more money, and new revenue streams must be found. The only things off the table are real cost controls at the MTA and having the people who actually use the system pay for it.

Instead, it’s all about redistribution, about who will subsidize somebody else’s ride.

When he campaigned in 2010, Cuomo famously said New York “has no future as the tax capital of the nation.” Yet by any honest measure, the tax burden grows worse each year.

While he focuses only on the state income tax and property taxes, which have been capped at a 2 percent increase per year outside the city, the race to fund the subways is a good example of how other taxes and fees are popping up like mushrooms after a rainstorm.

The congestion tax alone would be the largest single tax on middle- class New Yorkers in modern times, clocking in at about $3,500 a year.

If Cuomo gets it, expect that a lot more people will become former New Yorkers.

Nancy dancing

You can’t blame Nancy Pelosi for trying to slow down her party’s rush to get rid of President Trump, but I’m not convinced she’s as opposed to impeachment as her words might suggest.

“Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path” she told The Washington Post.

Pelosi’s right about the divisiveness, as America learned during the Bill Clinton scandal, but I don’t believe she is ordering the hot-for-blood Dems to stop.

Her caveats — the need for “compelling and overwhelming” facts — are in the eye of the beholder. Rabid Dems such as Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff already said Trump committed crimes and collusion.

Now that they run the House, they are using explosive hearings to convince the public they have the goods on Trump. The Michael Cohen circus was the first step, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report will be another.

As for Pelosi’s test of “bipartisan” support, that will come if the hearings convince the public Trump must go. In that case, enough GOP senators likely would join Dems in forcing his removal.

So in effect, Pelosi didn’t say no to impeachment. She just clarified the conditions under which she’ll say yes.

Crazy money

Reader Joseph Traynor feigns shock at reports of runaway spending, with little results, by First Lady Chirlane McCray’s “Thrive” mental- health program. He writes that nobody mentions “Chirlane’s outstanding academic credentials, her years of managing a multimillion-dollar health-care enterprise and her vast experience in the nonprofit world.

“Oh, wait, she doesn’t have any!!!”

Stormy relationship

Headline: Michael Avenatti cuts ties with Stormy Daniels.

A pity it didn’t last. They deserve each other.