The point of the whitehouse.gov graphic is to split the debt by policies rather than by time, though. For example, lost tax revenue and some increases in spending are directly tied to the economic recession, and would have been the same whoever was in office (this is what the graphic labels “technical changes”), and policies like the so-called “Bush Tax Cuts”, the prescription drug benefit, and the price of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continued to cost large amounts of tax revenue even after the change of administration.

It’s quite reasonable, I think, for the Obama administration to refuse to be held responsible for such parts of the deficit largely out of their control.