Federal Spending in the USA since WWII

There's an interesting page on Wikipedia that illustrates the federal spending, debt, and GDP for Democratic vs. Republican Presidents. I doubt it's shocking news to anyone, but it's still nice to see the actual numbers.

A couple quickies to point out: 1) Federal debt is the highest it's been since WWII, and 2) between 1978-2005, Democrats increased federal spending by 9.9%, increased the federal debt by 4.2%, and increased the GDP by 12.6%; Republican presidents, on the other hand, increased spending by 12.1%, increased federal debt by 36.4% (!), and increased the GDP by 10.7%.

As kind of a side note, while GDP is a nice, easy-to-measure benchmark, what I'd really like to see is how American's mean wages shifted, depending on the party of the President.

One note - I'm aware that the President isn't dictator (as much as some Republicans have argued it should be :P), but, as the Wiki article points out, it's very rare for any congress to pass a budget that's more than what the President asks for.

Link: National debt by U.S. presidential terms