Deputy Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who is in charge of national strategy, and his staff have started reworking fiscal 2010 budgetary requests that total more than ¥95 trillion, a record amount. Given Japan's difficult financial situation, the main task before them is to prioritize items included in the budgetary requests.

Specifically, that means reducing the amount of appropriations aimed at carrying out promises contained in the Democratic Party of Japan's election manifesto.

Financial prospects for the Hatoyama administration are gloomy. While budgetary requests top ¥95 trillion, tax revenue for fiscal 2009 and 2010 is expected to come in at less than ¥38 trillion and ¥40 trillion, respectively. It is clear that it will be extremely difficult for the government to achieve the goal of limiting the issuance of deficit-covering bonds to no more than ¥44 trillion. Thus it appears inevitable that the government will have to reduce spending on some DPJ election promises.