That's a little naive don't you think? I agree this is mostly politics but during a recession there are programs that would cause extreme amounts of chaos if they are cut or would cause more of a setback than is responsible.
Here's a couple; say that during a recession we cut NASA down to nothing, saying we can't afford "science, discovery, and development" right now but soon as the economy improves they are back in business. The amount of time it would take to get them ramped back to a productive level would be more expensive than just borrowing during the downtime. So it is fiscally responsible to use deficit spending for that because its cheaper than the alternative. Or how about health care, if every time we hit a recession we let people get sick and die how would that help our workforce work out of the recession? So it would make sense to borrow money for that as well.
The flip side to this is that when things improve we don't instantly cut taxes because the government is pulling in more taxes than it uses. When Clinton left office there was a surplus and Bush's first action was to cut taxes, it happens over and over again, when things are good we want low taxes but when things are bad we need the governments help to get through it. We have to break out of that mindset.