Is There A Difference Between Republican and Democrat Presidents?

I was reading a friend's blog and he made the argument that the national debt goes up under Republicans and decreases under Democrats. He also notes that the raw debt numbers are not as informative as a comparison of debt to GDP would be. Well, I ran across that chart today and thought I would post it:
This chart tells more of the story. Newt Gingrich's Contract With America brought down the deficit under the Clinton years, making his budgets pretty successful and George W. Bush is not the bogeyman the Left makes him out to be. Bush responded to the 2001 recession with some deficit spending and then by 2006 was bringing it back down as a percentage of GDP. Only the financial meltdown brought the deficit back up.

Now Barack Obama has dwarfed anything Bush ever did. And it only took him two months. Bush's people consulted with Obama's people in the bailouts, so Bush doesn't bear complete blame for that debacle. As the article above points out:

In 2010, Obama envisions a reduction in the deficit to $1.17 trillion. He also assumes a 3.4 percent increase in GDP between 2009 and 2010, which would mean that the deficit as a share of GDP would decline to 8 percent. That's a very optimistic forecast that actually weakens the foundation of the budget document itself.

There is nothing new or responsible about Obama's budget.