The Government Accountability Office analysis fails to support its contention that Obamacare improves the deficit. It shows that between January 2010 (i.e., before Obamacare) and fall 2010 (after Obamacare) the primary deficit — which is the difference between revenue and noninterest spending — shrank by 1.5 percent of gross domestic product under the baseline scenario, but increased by 0.7 percent of GDP under the alternative fiscal scenario. Massive spending cuts account for nearly three-quarters of that 2.2 percentage point swing in the deficit. Which is to say that we will get this modest improvement in the deficit if and only if we’re willing to endure the draconian cuts whose adverse consequences the Medicare actuary has tried to warn us about for three years now.