Fiscal Conservatism Lives in the Democratic Party?

I have not gone to check these facts, but they are pretty complete - from the comments section of this post on Forbes.com:

The last Republican who left the office of the presidency with the federal public debt as a percentage of GDP less than when he entered was Richard Nixon (FY 1975). The last Republican who left the office of the presidency with a federal deficit less than 2.7% of GDP was Dwight Eisenhower (FY 1961).

Since WW II no Democratic president has ever left office with the federal public debt as a percentage of GDP more than when he entered. And since WW II no Democratic president has ever left office with a federal deficit more than 2.6% of GDP.

And:

In my opinion, fiscal responsibility mainly involves reducing the public debt as a percentage of GDP. (Anything less is unsustainable.) Since the end of WW II we've had 63 Federal budgets (FY 1947-FY 2009). If you consider the FY 2002 budget the product of a united Republican government (a Republican congress passed the tax cut) and FY 2003 the product of a divided government you have the following breakdown. Thirtynine budgets were the product of a divided government with 31 having Republican presidents and 8 having Democratic presidents. Twentyfour budgets were the product of united government with 19 having Democratic presidents and 5 having Republican presidents.

The Federal public debt increased as a percentage of GDP in 24 of those fiscal years.(It did not increase during the transitional quarter in 1977.) Eighteen of these budgets were the product of divided government and the remaining six were the product of united government. So although 38.1% of all of the budgets were a product of united governments only 25% of the budgets which resulted in an increase in the public debt were the product of a united government. It seems if reducing the public debt is your goal, then a united government is at least slightly preferable to a divided government.

The worst possible combination is a united Republican government. Three out of the five budgets passed by a united Republican government (60%), an admittedly small sample, resulted in an increase in the Federal public debt as a percent of GDP. The next worst combination was divided government with a Republican president. Eighteen out of 31 budgets passed (58.1%) increased the public debt. Only 3 out of the 19 budgets that were the product of united Democratic government (15.8%) increased the public debt. And none of the 8 budgets passed by a divided government with a Democratic president increased the public debt.