Albany just got a windfall of $8 billion — get ready to watch the state’s leaders throw it away.

Wall Street bonuses are soaring for a third straight year, not only producing an $8 billion surplus this year, but also slashing the coming year’s deficit by $6.4 billion to $2.9 billion, a gap the current overage can obviously cover.

As state Budget Director Blake Washington noted Tuesday, “It’s hard to talk about new taxes when revenues are performing the way they are,” indicating that Gov. Kathy Hochul won’t be proposing tax hikes, but only “presenting a new favorable financial plan.”

This explains Hochul‘s comment to reporters at the Somos junket in Puerto Rico, namely that she’s open to new taxes “if there’s a need.”

Of course, that doesn’t rule out a political need.

She’s facing intense pressure from Mayor Zohran Mamdani to hike taxes, because for the socialists, the huge amount of taxes the rich already pay is never enough: They must be punished until they flee New York, taking this massive windfall with them.

Then again, Hochul’s own hostility to data centers and to AI in general also threatens to undermine this cash gusher.

But meanwhile the huge surplus will also feed the resistance in the Legislature to containing costs, whether in the state’s obscene spending on school aid or its even-more-expensive Medicaid system, now wracked by rampant fraud such as the phantom adult-day-care programs the feds recently raided.

In short, Albany will ensure the $8 billion windfall goes right out the door, much of it to start new programs that the state will need to keep on funding.

Yet these Wall Street sugar rushes never last — so boosting baseline spending as if they will guarantees a crisis down the line.

We hope Hochul hangs tough against new spending as well as new taxes.

But she’ll have to stare down the entire rest of state (and city!) government to do it.