Japanese Government Budget to be Reduced

It now appears that Prime Minister Koizumi will actually go through with his election promises to reduce government spending. At least the government's budget plans for 2006 says they will spend 3% less than the current year. While budget forecasts are not always completely reliable, this means that actual spending is certainly more likely than not to fall.

As I've already told you, government spending in Hong Kong have also fallen. Why is it that the Asian governments can reduce government spending in absolute terms -not just relative to GDP- while most Western -including the Swedish and American- governments seemingly can't?