For example, in a majority of countries, a return to 2007 levels of transfer spending would have closed less than a third of the budget gap in 2010. Moreover, no OECD country has been able to achieve cuts of this scale in the context of weak growth and elevated unemployment. In the United States as well as the Southern and English-speaking EU, the size of current budget deficits makes it clear that determined measures on both the expenditure and the revenue side would be required to return to fiscal sustainability.