I think it basically boils down to the fact that "the government is like a household" is a very powerful metaphor.

Another powerful metaphor is that "the recession is the hangover from the binge of good times"

The hangover theory, then, turns out to be intellectually incoherent; nobody has managed to explain why bad investments in the past require the unemployment of good workers in the present. Yet the theory has powerful emotional appeal. Usually that appeal is strongest for conservatives, who can't stand the thought that positive action by governments (let alone--horrors!--printing money) can ever be a good idea. Some libertarians extol the Austrian theory, not because they have really thought that theory through, but because they feel the need for some prestigious alternative to the perceived statist implications of Keynesianism. And some people probably are attracted to Austrianism because they imagine that it devalues the intellectual pretensions of economics professors. But moderates and liberals are not immune to the theory's seductive charms--especially when it gives them a chance to lecture others on their failings.

See also Common sense conservative:

an advocate of conservative politics who adopts the rhetoric of "common sense" to frame his or her arguments. The term is almost always used to apply to domestic and fiscal policy.

Economics is politics by other means