Chancellor George Osborne is being urged to "finish the job" of repairing the country's finances - as he prepares to deliver the Autumn Statement.
Lib Dem Treasury Chief Secretary Danny Alexander said "several tens of billions" more savings were needed to eradicate the deficit by 2017/18.
But he said it was a "smallish" effort compared with measures announced.
Labour says the chancellor has failed to keep his 2010 general election promise to clear the deficit.
Mr Osborne will deliver his Autumn Statement at 12:30 GMT in the House of Commons.
It is expected to include measures aimed at helping the High Street compete against online retailers.
The Treasury has also said it will guarantee £500m of bank lending to small and medium-sized businesses and pledged £400m to extend a funding scheme for such companies.
The chancellor is also expected to scrap a mechanism that could have seen the cost of fuel rise next year.
But shadow chancellor Ed Balls criticised Mr Osborne for failing to "balance the books".
"Unless growth is strong and wages are rising for working people the deficit doesn't come down," he said. "Without a plan for jobs and work, it's not going to work."
But Conservative former chancellor Ken Clarke claimed the UK would have been in a "bad way" had Mr Osborne stuck to his target of eradicating the deficit before the election.
"I actually think that although it wasn't entirely planned, it was very sensible we didn't do it that quickly," he told BBC Newsnight.
Much of the likely content of the statement is already known:
• There will be confirmation of an extra £2bn being put into health services across the UK
• The government has already announced more than 1,400 flood defence projects are to receive funding to protect 300,000 homes. The Treasury says the £2.3bn investment - which is not new money - will help prevent £30bn of damage in areas including the Thames and Humber Estuaries
• Bicester in Oxfordshire has been chosen as the site for the coalition's second new garden city. Up to 13,000 new homes are due to be built on the edge of the town, as part of the coalition's plans to help deal with the UK's housing shortage
• A tunnel is to be dug to take a congested main road past Stonehenge. The 1.8-mile (2.9km) tunnel is part of a £2bn plan to make the A303 a dual carriageway
• Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg is set to pledge an extra £150m of funding to help children with eating disorders. The aim is to invest in preventative therapy to cut the need for hospital treatment
The Autumn Statement - which was called the pre-Budget report under the previous Labour government - is a chance to set out the state of the nation's finances.
Critics predict that these will show that the government is failing to meet its borrowing forecasts, in part because of lower-than-expected revenues from tax.
The BBC's economics editor, Robert Peston, said he expected the Office for Budget Responsibility to make a significant upward revision in its figure for this year's budget deficit.
But Mr Alexander, the chancellor's deputy in the Treasury, argued that the UK must "stay on course" in its efforts to reduce the deficit.
Speaking at the launch of the National Infrastructure Plan, containing details of £466bn of privately and publicly-funded schemes, Mr Alexander said the investment would not be possible without keeping control of the nation's finances.
He said: "There will be further work to be done on completing the job, finishing the job of eliminating the structural deficit. That will be several tens of billions of pounds more.
"But in the context of what we have done so far this Parliament, it is a further effort but it is a smallish - it's maybe another third or so, a quarter, of that effort that needs to be carried on in the years up to 2017/18 which is when we have said we want to eliminate the structural deficit by.
"We have to stay that course. To deviate from it would be to undermine one of the foundations of the economic recovery that we have been seeing."
'Austerity experiment'
Labour has accused ministers of costing the taxpayer tens of billions of pounds in lost revenues through the "abject failure" of its economic policies.
The party said ordinary families were paying the price for Mr Osborne's failure to fulfil his promise at the last general election in 2010 to clear the deficit and start paying down Britain's debt by the end of the current Parliament.
The Scottish National Party has called for George Osborne to use his Autumn Statement to commit to swift action to implement the Smith Commission recommendations on further Scottish devolution.
The party's deputy leader, Stewart Hosie, said: "Next May, the Scottish people will deliver their verdict on Mr Osborne's time as chancellor. As his austerity agenda continues to inflict pain across the country and his list of broken promises grows longer, Mr Osborne is rapidly running out of time to redeem himself."
Plaid Cymru's Treasury spokesperson, Jonathan Edwards, has criticised the UK government's "austerity experiment" which he said had led to "abject failure to balance the books". Mr Edwards also said Wales had "suffered disproportionately" from the government's spending cuts.
The Green Party of England and Wales has said the government's "dreadful austerity cuts to public services" have done "terrible damage". Party leader Natalie Bennett has called for a rebalancing of the economy.
BBC News UK
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