Paul Krugman is a Smart Man

“Now is the time for the government to spend more, not less, until the private sector is ready to carry the economy forward again—yet job-destroying austerity policies have instead become the rule,”

Even Ronald Reagan knew this.  I'm pretty sure that most in the GOP realize this too they just won't admit it in public, not when blaming the deficit on Obama has been much too easy (albeit incorrect) and much too beneficial to them. 

“The strange thing is that there was and is no evidence to support the shift in focus away from jobs and toward deficits. Where the harm done by lack of jobs is real and terrible, the harm done by deficits to a nation like America in its current situation is, for the most part, hypothetical. The quantifiable burden of debt is much smaller than you would imagine from the rhetoric, and warnings about some kind of debt crisis are based on nothing much at all.”

"End This Depression Now" should be required reading for all Republicans.