The old politics of public debt is austerity - aggressive spending cuts to repay debt. Intuitively, the post-pandemic environment is an opportunity for progressive political-economic change, although the same was true after the 2008 global financial crisis. After 2008, many countries saw the increase of austerity ideas, with governments restricting spending to avoid public debt. Blyth argues 'we were all temporary Keynesians' during the 2008 recession, but the 'dangerous idea' of austerity returned. Graeber also argues debt creates 'moral confusion', which causes voters to accept the logic of repaying debt and consequential spending cuts. With significant increases in debt occurring during the pandemic, we can ask whether we are again only temporarily Keynesians, whether austerity politics will return, or whether a new politics of public debt is emerging that aims to avoid class-based resistance to spending cuts but grow the economy so that debt is less of a problem. While research cannot predict future developments, it can explore the factors that have influenced previous austerity policies. This thesis conducts a content analysis of government and opposition speeches on annual government budgets in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia to test how rhetoric has evolved since the late 1980s in response to increased public debt caused by the early 1990s, 2008 and 2020 recessions. It argues political parties have gradually reframed the urgency of repaying debt and softened spending restriction rhetoric since 1990. The analysis demonstrates a long-existing trend of parties reframing rhetoric about the causes and proposed solutions to increased debt. With the benefit of a longer-term view of the 2008 crisis, evidence indicates it was austerity that was temporary, rather than Keynesianism. The thesis builds upon previous work that has highlighted factors that encourage parties to repay debt, including the power of capital interests and moral anti-debt or austerity ideas. It does so by aligning existing theory with other recession-crisis problem-solving theories, such as those of Streeck and Hall. Together, these perspectives help to develop theoretical explanations for the tendency of governments to expand debt. [...]