The view against austerity was mainstream until very recently. Counter-cyclical spending was a bipartisan point of agreement from the 40s until the year 2009.

The view against austerity was mainstream until very recently. Counter-cyclical spending was a bipartisan point of agreement from the 40s until the year 2009. You never heard anyone accuse each other of being "keynesian" or "hayekian", it was just econ 101 that counter-cyclical policy made sense. Now that we're out of the woods on the economy, we should in fact be trying fix the debt problem -- but without hurting the economy too much in the process. Shrinking the deficit while shrinking GDP doesn't really do much for you.