While Congress slogs through the final months of the health reform debate, the American people remain focused on the economy. With good reason: We’re in a very deep hole, and it’s not clear how we’re going to get out. 

As Christina Romer, chair of the president’s Council of Economic Advisors, pointed out in her recent testimony before the Joint Economic Committee, “The shocks that hit the U.S. economy last fall were, by almost any measure, larger than those that precipitated the Great Depression.” And despite unprecedented government action, the labor market has reflected these shocks. Since the current recession began in December of 2007, the economy has shed 7.6 million jobs—5.2 percent of the prerecession total. By contrast, only 1.45 million jobs (1.9 percent) were lost in the 1973-75 recession and 2.64 million (3.1 percent) in 1981-82. And Bureau of Labor Statistics data reveal a stunning fact: In the past ten years, for the first time since the Great Depression, there has been no net job generation in the private sector. As of the end of September 2009, non-farm private employment stood at 108.5 million; in September 1999, the comparable figure was 108.7 million. Otherwise put, the current recession has already nullified all the employment growth of the previous 8+ years, and we may not have hit bottom yet. 

Romer predicted that economic growth and job generation between now and the end of 2010 will barely be high enough to keep unemployment from getting worse. And there are, she stressed, important downside risks, including unusually tight credit conditions and larger than expected productivity gains. As Paul Krugman pointed out yesterday, “At current growth rates we’d be lucky to see the unemployment rate fall by half a percentage point per year, meaning that it would take a decade to return to something like full employment.” And that’s if growth continues at the most recent quarter’s rate without interruption until 2019, which hardly anyone expects. 

Krugman’s proposed response is more government stimulus as far as the eye can see.  But Romer appears to believe that the long-term fiscal situation places limits on the government’s ability to continue fiscal stimulus beyond the near-term: “The Mid-Session review released in August predicted ... substantial structural deficits even once the recession is over and the economy is fully recovered. Such long-term deficits are unacceptable and need to be dealt with. Over the long run, sustained deficits crowd out private investment and reduce long-run growth.” Although Romer holds out hope that health reform could “improve the long-term fiscal situation dramatically,” the CEA’s own report issued last June undercuts that hope, as I pointed out in a previous TNR column. 

So which is it to be—unending stimulus, regardless of the deficit and debt, or temporary stimulus followed by fiscal restraint? That is the debate Democrats need to have and cannot indefinitely postpone. But the advocates of restraint, in whose camp I count myself, must ask themselves a question: What are we proposing in place of open-ended stimulus to save the American people (and especially young Americans just starting out) from a lost decade of constricted opportunity?

It’s a mistake to put too much weight on the results of any single public opinion survey. That said, Peter Hart and Bill McInturff are an unusually experienced and fair-minded bipartisan team, and I’m inclined to take their work for NBC and the Wall Street Journal seriously. Their latest results offer little encouragement for the president, either political party, or the political system as a whole.

Let’s begin with the political system. Trust in government now stands at 23 percent—the lowest level in at least twelve years. A stunning 76 percent of Americans believe that the government in Washington will do the right thing only some of the time, or never. These statistics confirm the findings from a recent CBS/New York Times poll, and they suggest that proponents of government action must overcome deep skepticism. The Obama administration inherited a public sector most Americans regarded as broken, and nothing since the inauguration has fundamentally altered that perception.

One illustration: I recently had the opportunity to help design a survey of public attitudes towards health reform. The results, published jointly by Brookings and WorldPublicOpinion.org, showed broad public support for a range of reform options, including both Democratic and Republican proposals. Nevertheless, fully 53 percent of the respondents expressed the fear that if government gets more heavily involved in health care, it will just make matters worse. Similarly, the NBC/WSJ survey found 51 percent more concerned that government will end up “going too far and making the health care system worse than it now is in terms of quality of care and choice of doctor” versus only 44 percent concerned that the government will not do enough to lower costs and cover the uninsured.

These concerns may be related to the recent surge in the activities of the federal government. In the month after Barack Obama took office, 51 percent of Americans believed that government “should do more to solve problems and help meet the needs of people.” Today, the figure stands at 46 percent. Meanwhile, the percent who believe that government is “doing too many things better left to businesses” and individuals has risen from 40 to 48 percent. The shift has occurred in tandem with increased concern about our fiscal situation. According to Hart and McInturff, only 31 percent of respondents believe that the president and Congress “should worry more about boosting the economy even though it may mean larger budget deficits” versus 62 percent who say that the president and Congress “should worry more about keeping the deficit down, even though it may mean it will take longer for the economy to recover.”

This wariness about increased government spending does not mean people believe that the economy is on the mend. Fifty eight percent believe that we still have a way to go before we hit bottom (up from 52 percent just last month), and 63 percent believe that unemployment will continue to get worse.  Only 42 percent expect things to get better in the next twelve months, down from 47 percent just last month.

Congress and the major parties can draw little comfort from the Hart/McInturff report. Overall approval of “the job that Congress is doing” stands at 24 percent—down from an already anemic 31 percent shortly after President Obama’s inauguration. But while approval of the Democratic Party has declined from 49 to 42 percent during that period, public perceptions of the Republicans hasn’t improved either—26 percent approval in February, 25 percent today. “A plague on both your houses” may be the best summary of current public attitudes.

Finally, President Obama. His overall approval has fallen from 68 percent in January to 56 percent today. Only 44 percent both like him and approve of most of his policies, down from 55 percent. Only 56 percent see him as having strong leadership qualities, down from 70 percent. Compared to nine months ago, far fewer American see him as firm and decisive, or as willing to work with people whose viewpoints are different from his own. While 63 percent continue to believe that the economy is a situation Obama inherited, that’s down from 84 percent in February. If that trend continues, the president will own the economy by next spring. While 38 percent of Americans now think his health care plan is a “good idea” (up from 33 percent in April), the number who think it’s a “bad idea” has risen much more, from 26 to 42 percent. And the reasons are clear: many more Americans believe that the quality of their health care will get worse rather than better and that costs will rise rather than going down. In a similar vein, the Brookings/WorldPublicOpinion.org found that despite the president’s repeated assurances, most Americans expect his plan to increase the budget deficit and raise their taxes.

This bad news does not warrant the conclusion that the president’s program has been misguided. It does suggest, however, that the bold actions he has undertaken have taken a toll in public confidence and support. As he and his advisors plan for the second year of his administration, they would do well to ask themselves how much more the people will bear. The man who famously called for l'audace, et encore de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace" ended his life at the guillotine.

The current state of American politics presents a paradox. On the one hand, survey after survey testifies to the rock-bottom standing of the Republican Party. Fewer Americans identify with the party than in the past, and fewer trust it to deal with the country’s problems. On the other hand, there are hard-to-ignore signs of a conservative resurgence. A 15,000 person Gallup survey out today shows that 40 percent of Americans now identify themselves as conservative (up from 37 percent at the time of Obama’s election), while only 20 percent regard themselves as liberal (down from 22 percent). Far more independents (35 percent) consider themselves conservative than was the case a year ago (only 29 percent).

These findings would be less compelling if they were not linked to conservative shifts on specific issues--but they are, and the Gallup organization enumerates a considerable list. Among them: increasing opposition to government regulation of business and gun ownership; an uneasy feeling about the influence of labor unions; increasing support for immigration restrictions and government promotion of traditional values; and diminished support for strong action on climate change. The percentage of Americans who believe that government is trying to do too much stands at its highest level (57 percent) in many years. Trust in government is near all-time lows, and Americans believe that 50 cents of every federal tax dollar is wasted--the highest level ever.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that unified Democratic government has sparked a conservative counter-mobilization. Because we cannot rerun history as a controlled experiment, we will never know whether this could have been avoided had the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats adopted a different strategy. In any case, it’s too late to reverse it.

Still, Democrats must ask themselves whether there’s anything they can do over the next year--for example, a meaningful shift toward fiscal restraint--to reduce the intensity level of the conservative assault. If not, the combination of an energized opposition and an electorate battered by high unemployment, slow growth, and the perception of out-of-control spending could set the stage for an ugly outcome. This wouldn’t mean that Republicans had regained credibility as a governing party; odds are that it will take more than two years to erase the public’s sour memories of the Republican congressional majority and George W. Bush’s presidency. It would mean that a substantial portion of the electorate wanted to send Democrats a message that they had gone too far.

The Clinton administration (in which I served) was derailed by the results of its first midterm election, and it took Democrats a decade to recover. While there are reasons to believe that Republicans won’t do as well this time, Democratic leaders should take seriously the possibility of a significant electoral reverse and act strategically to make it less likely.

With all the focus on a  handful of high-profile items, many important features in the House and Senate health reform proposals are being overlooked. And some of these neglected items bear on the fiscal soundness of whatever reform is eventually adopted.

Consider the proposed new federal long-term care program (the “CLASS Act”), which is included in both the House and Senate HELP Committee bills but not in the Finance Committee’s version. Enrollment in the program would be voluntary and open to all active workers and their spouses. In return for monthly premiums, enrollees would be guaranteed cash payments if they become unable to perform certain basic activities—such as feeding and dressing themselves--without assistance. Enrollees would have to pay premiums for a minimum of five years, after which benefits would be paid out of a trust fund consisting of accumulated premiums plus interest earned on its balances. The proposed legislation would give the HHS secretary wide latitude to adjust premiums and benefits to ensure solvency over time.

So far, this sounds like an insurance program, albeit one run by the federal government. But there’s a catch. In a July 6 letter to Senator Kay Hagan, CBO director Douglas Elmendorf estimates that “the proposal’s net effect on the federal budget would be to reduce the budget deficit by about $58 billion during the 2010-2019 period.” And he explains why: “The estimated reduction in the federal budget deficit over the next 10 years is chiefly the result of the five-year vesting requirement; the payout of benefits would not begin until 2016, five years after the initial enrollment in 2011.”

In a normal insurance program, the fund created by accumulating premiums is set aside as a reserve against future claims by beneficiaries. Technically, the HELP Committee’s bill does establish such as fund, often called a “lockbox.” But here’s the catch: the CLASS Act savings as scored by the CBO are counted against the costs of the overall health reform effort. There are only two possibilities. If the funds are really sequestered for long-term care, then the rest of health reform is underfunded by $58 billion over the next decade. If the funds are not sequestered and are in effect used to finance the overall reform package, then the CLASS Act is underfunded by $58 billion, mostly in the decade after that. You can’t spend the same money twice. So in either event, the government would have to find the money someplace else or allow the deficit to increase by an additional $58 billion.

This may strike some readers as a detail, or worse, as a diversion. I don’t think so. We’re already facing an unsustainable fiscal future. The least we can do is to honor the political version of the Hippocratic oath and do no harm. That’s what President Obama has promised. Serious legislators shouldn’t use accounting tricks—such as pushing deficits outside CBO’s scoring windows--to sidestep this pledge.

There are signs that the appeal of such tricks is growing rapidly as Congress begins to focus on the real cost of fiscal integrity. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has apparently decided to address the issue of Medicare physician reimbursement--a $247 billion item--outside of health reform and without paying for it. And just today, Al Hunt floated the idea of including the CLASS Act in the final health legislation, largely on the grounds that it raises revenue that could be used to pay for reform. All this while the dollar is in free-fall and foreign countries are beginning to discuss ways of ending its role as the world’s reserve currency.

Health reform is important, but so is the long-term health of the U.S. economy. President Obama’s official position is just right: no reform is acceptable that digs our fiscal hole even deeper. Between now and the end of the year, we’ll find out whether he means it.

I’m grateful to Michael Cohen for challenging my views on General McChrystal, because it invites me--indeed, compels me--to say more about how I reached my conclusion. (Click here to find out why Joe Biden flipped on Afghanistan.)

Let’s begin with some propositions about which I suspect there’s little disagreement: Entering or expanding a war is the gravest decision a political community can make. Lives, scarce resources, and honor are at stake, and the consequences of mistaken judgments are both large and lasting. Whatever may be the case for other regimes, a democracy cannot sustain the decision to enter or expand a war without the people’s informed assent.

I was a junior in college when LBJ made his fateful choice to escalate the war in Vietnam after assuring the American people that he would do nothing of the sort and winning the presidency in part on the basis of that assurance. The people were shut out of the process, and Congress lacked the information to object. It was not until years later, largely through leaks, that we learned about the doubts and dissent that attended that decision. Would it have made a difference if we had known? Who knows? But the fact is that we didn’t, with consequences that have persisted down to the present.

Liberal pundits, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and National Security Advisor James Jones are in agreement: General Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was wrong to give public voice to his views about the best way forward in that beleaguered country. Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman accused McChrystal of “a plain violation of the principle of civilian control.” Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson put it most bluntly: "The men with the stars on their shoulders … need to shut up and salute." Some are even drawing parallels between McChrystal and Douglas MacArthur. All these critics are wrong.

Of the more than 500 amendments offered to Senator Max Baucus's "chairman's mark," one of the most important is surely Senator Ron Wyden's proposal to allow everyone access to the plans offered in health insurance exchanges. Under his plan, employers offering group health coverage would have two options. They could choose to offer their workers two or more plans, at least one of which would have premiums no higher than those of the most affordable high-quality plans in their area. If they don't want to do that, they would be required to offer all eligible employees a voucher equal to the amount they contribute to their employees' coverage under the plan they sponsor. Workers could either return the voucher to the employer and remain within the sponsored plan or use the voucher to purchase coverage through the local health exchange. Workers who select plans costing less than the value of the voucher would be able to keep the unspent amount as cash.

Wyden's plan would offer more choice for both workers and employers, and it would encourage cost containment by encouraging consumers to select lower-cost options. CBO scores the plan as roughly deficit-neutral; the Lewin Group believes that it would actually lower the deficit by reducing the amount of revenue the federal government foregoes because of the tax exclusion for employer-provided health benefits.

On March 27, President Obama announced a new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. This, in part, is what he said:

Many people in the United States--and many in partner countries that have sacrificed so much--have a simple question: What is our purpose in Afghanistan? After so many years, they ask, why do our men and women still fight and die there? And they deserve a straightforward answer.

So let me be clear: Al Qaeda and its allies--the terrorist who planned and supported the 9/11 attacks--are in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Multiple intelligence estimates have warned that al Qaeda is actively planning attacks on the United States homeland from its safe haven in Pakistan. And if the Afghan government falls to the Taliban – or allows al Qaeda to go unchallenged--that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can.

The future of Afghanistan is inextricably linked to the future of its neighbor, Pakistan. In the nearly eight years since 9/11, al Qaeda and its extremist allies have moved across the border to the remote areas of the Pakistani frontier. … For the American people, this border region has become the most dangerous place in the world.

As President, my greatest responsibility is to protect the American people. We are not in Afghanistan to control that country or to dictate its future. We are in Afghanistan to confront a common enemy that threatens the United States, our friends and our allies, and the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan to have suffered the most at the hand of violent extremists.

So I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future. That’s the goal that must be achieved. That is a cause that could not be more just. And to the terrorists who oppose us, my message is the same: We will defeat you.

President Obama could not have been clearer in articulating his understanding of the fundamental national interests at stake in Afghanistan. And nothing that has happened in the past six months affects--or should affect--that understanding. That includes the controversy over the Afghan elections. If what the president said was true in March, it remains true today.

In recent weeks, senior Obama administration officials have suggested that historically high levels of unemployment could persist for many years. Indeed, the most recent OMB projections show unemployment remaining above 7 percent until 2012, and above 5 percent through at least 2019.

There are good reasons to take these warnings seriously, even if the economic recovery is more vigorous than the current consensus suggests. Since the recession began, the number of unemployed persons has risen by 7.4 million (4.8. percentage points), and a look beneath the official unemployment statistics reveals even worse news. The number of people who want full-time jobs but have been forced to settle for part-time work has risen from 5.9 million a year ago to 9.1 million today. The number of discouraged workers—people who would like to work but aren’t looking because they believe that no jobs are available—has nearly doubled. It’s not hard to see why: The long-term unemployed (those out of work for more than six months), who constituted less than one-fifth of all the jobless a year ago, now account for fully one-third.

New entrants into the labor force have been hit especially hard. During the past year, the unemployment rate among 20 to 24 year-olds has surged from an already high 10.7 percent to 15.1 percent, and from 11.7 to 16.8 percent among young men in this age bracket. By contrast, despite numerous heartbreaking anecdotes, older workers have fared better: Among 45 to 54 year-olds, unemployment rose from 4.4 to 7.7 percent; among those 55 and older, from 4.1 to 6.8 percent.

In part, the squeeze at the bottom of the age range reflects a growing tendency among older Americans to work later into their lives. The recession is boosting their labor force participation rate, which fell steadily from the end of World War Two until the mid-1980s before beginning a slow rise. Sixty-three percent of workers ages 50 to 61 say they may have to delay their retirement because of the effects of the recession, and a stunning 38 percent of workers 62 and over report that they already have put their retirement plans on hold. Although economists rightly warn against the “lump of labor” fallacy (the proposition that the number of jobs is fixed and that one person’s job comes at another’s expense), what holds true in the long run may not apply in the short term. In times of high unemployment and weak job generation, a slowdown in those leaving their jobs at the end of their careers is bound to have ripple effects throughout the rest of the system.

If OMB’s projections are correct, unemployment will average 9.8 percent during 2010 and will likely stand above 9 percent on the day of the mid-term election. After the health care debate ends, and whatever its outcome may be, the administration and congressional Democrats would be well advised to turn their attention back to the economy and ask themselves whether there is anything more to be done to jumpstart job creation. If current trends continue unaltered, the American people will suffer—and so too will the Democratic Party.

It should have been clear all along that the fate of health reform would depend on the views not of those who don’t have insurance, but of the more than 80 percent of Americans who do. Unless President Obama can persuade them that they have more to gain than to lose from reform, House Democrats from marginal districts and Senate Democrats from red states will be hard to bring along. That argument--that even the health “haves” will benefit from reform--should be at the center of the president’s speech on Wednesday.

As a recent report from the Kaiser Family Foundation makes clear, Mr. Obama has some important facts on his side. Among them:

• The employer-based health insurance system is under severe pressure. In 2000, 69 percent of firms offered health coverage. By 2008, before the worst of the economic downturn, that figure had fallen to 63 percent.

• Over the past ten years, while workers’ inflation-adjusted earnings have grown by 5 percent, inflation-adjusted insurance premiums have risen by 80 percent--meaning that workers have to spend a higher share of their income each year just to maintain their current level of coverage. Workers’ premiums for a typical family policy, which stood at $1,619 in 2000, more than doubled to $3,354 by 2008.

• About one-quarter of the increase in the uninsured since 2000 has come in the heart of the middle-class--families making between twice to four times the poverty rate ($44,000 to $88,000 per year). Ten percent of middle-class adults report that they or a family member lost health insurance because of the current recession.

Up to now, the president has repeated a middle-class message that served him better during his campaign than it has since he took office: If you like what you have now, you can keep it, and nothing in my plan will prevent you from doing that. The debate over the public option has weakened the public’s confidence in that promise. At the same time, the discussion of options for reducing costs and financing coverage for the uninsured has led many members of the middle-class to believe that they will be worse off under reform.

As a result, the president now faces a two-front challenge. First, he must persuade skeptical middle-class voters that his plan will in fact allow them to keep what they have. Second, he must paint a compelling picture of what they stand to lose if we do nothing--higher premiums, reduced benefits, more out-of-pocket cost, and steadily diminishing employer coverage in good times as well as bad.

Behavioral economics supports what political observers have long believed: Fear of loss is a more powerful motive than hope of gain. A man who gained the presidency by mobilizing hope must now go against his grain by appealing to fear as well.

Just days after Barack Obama’s election victory last November, Elaine Kamarck and I published an essay with a somewhat downbeat title--“Change You Can Believe In Needs a Government You Can Trust.” We began this way:

“As Barack Obama takes office in 2009, he will confront a paradox. On the one hand, the American people are demanding action in many areas—to improve the economy, to increase access to health care while restraining costs, and to reduce energy costs and our dependence on oil, among others. On the other hand, people are deeply mistrustful of the federal government as an honest and capable agent for achieving these goals. There is nothing new about this ambivalence, but how the next president deals with it may make the difference between success and failure, measured in sustainable public support as well as legislative accomplishment.”

We went on to trace the history and causes of declining trust in government and to recommend a series of steps—including a government reform agenda and modest, confidence-building domestic policy measures—that the new administration could take to nurture public trust in the federal government as an effective and honorable instrument of national purpose. And we warned that “the new administration cannot afford to assume that because the people grudgingly support a massive rescue plan for the financial sector, they will embrace a major expansion of government in other sectors of our society.”

Nothing that has happened in the ensuing ten months has changed my mind about the importance of trust in government. In October 2008, at the end of the Bush administration, just 17 percent of Americans trusted the federal government to do the right thing all or most of the time. Barack Obama’s inauguration has made remarkably little difference: The latest CBS survey reports that the trust level now stands at 23 percent. By contrast, it stood at 47 percent in 2004, 44 percent in 2000, and 40 percent in 1988. (From the late 1950s through the early 1970s, it averaged more than 60 percent.) 

 With the near-simultaneous release this morning of CBO's updated Budget and Economic Outlook and OMB's Mid-Session Review, we have the most detailed economic analyses and forecasts we are likely to see for the rest of the year.

If the consensus these documents represent is in the ballpark, the country and the Obama administration are in for a rough ride. Consider the following:

After shrinking over 2009, real GDP will grow only anemically in 2010 before that growth accelerates for a few years and then subsides to below 3 percent for the second half of the decade.

Unemployment will remain persistently high, averaging about 10 percent in 2010, when Democrats will be trying to defend their recent congressional gains. It will be close to 9 percent in 2011, but remain well above 7 percent as late as 2012, when President Obama presumably will run for reelection.

After years of economic recovery and growth, budget deficits will remain larger throughout the next decade than most economists (and the administration) consider acceptable, raising debt held by the public to between 67.8 percent (CBO) and 76.5 percent (OMB) of GDP by the end of the decade.

CBO’s forecast, which is required by law to take current legislation as its baseline, assumes that all the Bush tax cuts as well the AMT patch will expire on schedule without being renewed, increasing revenues sharply, and that no new spending initiatives will be adopted. But hardly anyone believes that taxes will be allowed to rise that much (the administration isn’t recommending it), so revenues are likely to be lower than the forecast. And if any portion of the administration’s health care proposal is adopted, federal spending will be even higher than the 23.5 percent of GDP the administration projects for the next decade (CBO projects a near-identical 23.4 percent average). Bottom line: Deficits are likely to be even higher than either document predicts.

How can we pay for this much government and finance deficits this large? In recent years, the answer could be summed up in one word: China. But the evidence suggests that we can’t count on this in the future. From a high of 55 percent in 2006, China’s willingness to finance the U.S. deficit has fallen to only 9 percent in the first half of 2009. In the short term, as much of the global economy remains sluggish and the appetite for risk remains low, this won’t matter much. Within a few years, however, the tension between private sector borrowing and the public sector’s need is bound to increase, with increasingly unpleasant consequences for interest rates and growth.

In its mid-session review, the administration acknowledges that “the fiscal situation will demand more action once the economic recovery is fully underway” and that health insurance reform won’t be enough to do the job. If the president and his economic team mean what they say, they will be compelled to propose significant changes in the entire federal budget, including revenues and entitlements. But it’s not clear that many members of Congress from either party would be willing to step up to the plate. In any event, the ability of the United States to govern itself realistically and maturely will be tested, and the consequences of failure will be severe.

UPDATE: Because Noam Scheiber’s post also addresses the issue of China’s willingness to continue financing the U.S. budget deficit, I thought it would be useful to lay out the Treasury’s numbers more fully. In 2006, China purchased 55 percent of the annual increase in U.S. Treasuries outstanding. That fell to 33 percent in 2007, 22 percent in 2008, and 9 percent in the first half of 2009. If current trends continue, China will purchase about $145 billion this year, versus about $275 billion in 2008. This suggests that while the Chinese have many reasons not to destabilize our economy, their willingness to finance our deficit is waning. And if they accept the advice of just about everybody to deemphasize exports to the U.S. and build up their domestic market, the quantity of Chinese savings--public and household--available for overseas investment is bound to decline. It would, I repeat, be unwise to assume that the rest of the world would be willing to finance $9 trillion of new U.S. debt over the next decade on terms we would find attractive. So bringing that number down is more than a green eyeshade exercise; sustainable growth depends on it.