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Governments often say things like "we will reduce the deficit by 2025".
Why can't they simply eliminate the deficit immediately by spending less than the taxes they receive?
Surely if a country is in debt, it should try and run a surplus so it can start paying off it's debts and reduce its interest payments.
Is there some reason why they can't do this?
Some countries have very strict fiscal rules that basically force them to keep on spending more, or reduce the government's ability to cut spending (Brazil is a good example). Other countries have looser rules, but can't cut because of political pressures.
Remember acute spending cuts mean less money for hospitals, schools and many other services that rely on public money. It's often a very impopular measure.
That's why economists often favor clear, well-defined spending rules. Such as establishing a primary surplus target during times of economic growth, a maximum deficit during recessions and maybe a debt/GDP ratio ceiling.
This strategy works perfectly well for an individual, household, or company, because for these entities, there is no link between income and expenditure. Each one can cut expenditure and expect to continue to earn the same income. Governments do not work like that.
Most government income is highly dependent on the overall level of activity in the economy. If the government quickly reduces expenditure, this will almost certainly* lead to reduced employment, reduced investment, reduced tax receipts, and push up variable forms of government expenditure like unemployment and low-income benefits.
The result tends to be a massive contraction in economic output, and often an increase in the budget deficit, increasing the government's debt and reducing its ability to repay.
Here is a 4-minute summary of this point by Yanis Varoufakis.
There is also an obvious social cost to reductions in government expenditure. For instance, mild austerity in the UK since the global financial crisis caused around 30,000 excess deaths per year by 2015. Killing tens of thousands of your electorate each year can prove politically costly. The level of austerity required to balance a substantial deficit within a year is likely to have a much more extreme human cost.
*There are a few potentially large types of government expenditure that could have minimal effect on the domestic economy, e.g. purchase of foreign military equipment.
