Financial experts are poring over the details of George Osborne's Spending Review, in which he funded a U-turn on tax credit cuts with a £27bn windfall.
He abandoned plans to cut credits for millions of low-paid workers, thanks to better-than-expected forecast tax receipts and low debt interest rates.
However, cuts totalling £20bn to Whitehall departments and £12bn to welfare were detailed.
The Institute of Fiscal Studies will deliver its full assessment later.
Paul Johnson, of the independent economic think tank, said the tax credit move would change nothing in the long run because the cuts would still feature in the new Universal Credit system, which is due to replace tax credits by 2018.
Mr Johnson also said the chancellor had been "quite lucky".
'50-50 risk'
He said "the public finance forecasts were not desperately rosy relative to where they were in July" at the time of the Budget, and the revisions on tax receipts were "easily within the margins of error".
He told the BBC: "The risk for him, and this must be at least a 50-50 risk, is that the next time round, or the time after, or the time after, these tax revenue forecasts will look less rosy."
If that happened, the chancellor would need to either cut spending further or raise taxes in order to meet his target of bringing the public finances back into surplus.
- Key points of Spending Review and Autumn Statement
- Analysis: The lucky chancellor
- Public finances £27bn better than they were in July
- What the measures announced mean for your finances
- Read the Treasury background documents
Labour also argued that working families would still lose out with tax credits due to be phased out by 2018.
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell, who faced criticism from some Labour MPs for quoting former Chinese Communist leader Chairman Mao in his attack on the government, said the tax credits reversal was a victory for his party.
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BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said the £27bn windfall had allowed Mr Osborne to "cut with a blunt knife rather than a sharp axe" and press on with his bid to "anchor the Conservatives to the mainstream" of British politics.
Among the cuts in welfare spending will be a fresh squeeze on housing benefit.
The chancellor was forced to rethink plans to cut £4.4bn from tax credits from April after they were rejected by the House of Lords.
Rather than phasing the cuts in, as he had been expected to do, Mr Osborne said he had decided the "simplest thing" was "to avoid them altogether", even though it would mean missing his own target for overall welfare spending in the early years of this Parliament.
SNP Treasury spokesman Stuart Hosie said Mr Osborne's "complete and humiliating U-turn on tax credit cuts shows that we were right to keep the pressure up to the last minute" for the cuts to be scrapped.
A string of government departments will have to find double-digit savings in their running costs and local government is in line for further big cuts. although local authorities with responsibility for social care will be allowed to levy a new precept of up to 2% on council tax.
Other Spending Review announcements include:
- Police budgets in England and Wales will be protected in real terms, Mr Osborne said in a surprise announcement
- Plans to hand billions to private developers to build 400,000 new homes in England
- A real terms increase for education funding - including early years and further and higher education, and big regional differences in per pupil funding removed
- Buy-to-let landlords and people buying second homes will have to pay more in stamp duty
- A levy on companies to fund apprenticeships is being set at 0.5% of an employer's pay bill
- Basic state pension to rise by £3.35 next year to £119.30 a week
- Tax free childcare for families earning more than £100,000 to be scrapped
- Money for new road and rail projects, including the electrification of TransPennine, Midland Mainline and Great Western
- Holloway women's prison in London, is to close as part of a plan to modernise Britain's jails
- Housing benefit for new social tenants to be capped at same level as private sector
- NHS to deliver £22bn efficiency savings in England and Department of Health to cut 25% from its Whitehall budget
- Proposals to raise £5bn in a fresh crackdown on tax avoidance
- Using £15m a year from VAT on sanitary products to fund women's health charities
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