93 be layin' the wood to the conksuckers.
No because the branch of government responsible for spending is the Congress. Also appropriations bills are initiated in the House. The Democrats controlled the House of Representatives for 51 of the 68 years represented on that chart and controlled both Houses of Congress for 45 of the 68 years (Republicans did that for 15).
Reagan, as an example, always had a Democrat House and, though the majority of Senators were Republican in his first term, it was a narrow margin. Never more than by 8 seats. He never had a filibuster proof majority. He did not control spending.
Another thing is that what you see in that graph could basically be due to a scenario in which our system has increased a tendency towards a positive exponential increase so that WHOEVER is in office is just going to have to try to manage the rate to some extent but is not going to be able to do anything about the basic trend.
You go into debt and can't make ends meet. So you borrow to make ends meet. Meanwhile spending continues to increase and you have to go farther down that road. A scenario in which that kind of system inevitably results in a trend towards an positive exponential increase in debt is very plausible. It's like the figure below. What governs it is the underlying function. Nobody came in and changed anything at the point where the slope starts to increase dramatically. It's just the nature of the "system."
It could be that the exponential increase will continue unless the system is fundamentally changed. There could be some points at which things level off for a while or down tic a little. But the basic trend may persist. And by the system changing I mean get rid of the idea that government has to take care of everybody. Get rid of concepts like Medicare, Universal Health Care and, yes, Social Security. Because if you don't think Social Security is part of the problem and is going to become a much bigger part of the problem fairly soon down the road you are falling for a shell game.
