But the deficit target cannot be met without unpopular cuts, unpopular tax hikes or both.

The government, through a rigorous cash limits approach, is forcing local authorities to carry out most of the unpopular cuts in actual services.

To the extent that governments have been able to push through unpopular cuts, they have often done so using the requirements for monetary union as political cover.

Mr. Andrew's "boring, difficult, unpopular" cuts helped get the operation back in the black last year, as one party operative put it.

Naturally they want to keep these deeply unpopular cuts to a minimum, so they save money by reducing or removing grants to voluntary and community groups.

In a speech made on May 8, 2010, Gates stated that he would make politically unpopular cuts to the Pentagon bureaucracy in his future budgets.

- An additional £50m to help save the overnight sleeper service between Scotland and London after it was threatened with deep and unpopular cuts.

His election-year budget averted unpopular cuts by spending virtually all the state's savings and reserves.

Both avoid reasonable but politically unpopular cuts in Social Security.

No incumbent, after all, wants to run for re-election while slashing services and making unpopular cuts.