The good news: Both parties finally agree on an important element of public policy.

The bad news: What they agree on is doing nothing real about the deficit.

True, the country is still staggering from the hammer blows of a severe recession. With unemployment at 10.2 percent, the administration’s first moral – and political – priority should be kick-starting the economy and creating jobs.

But that’s in the short run. In the long run, deficits matter. A lot. And the numbers are truly shocking. The budget shortfall reached $1.4 trillion in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, by far the largest in history. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the national debt will snowball by a total of $9.1 trillion over the next decade.

Listen to Laura Tyson, former economic adviser to Bill Clinton, writing in BusinessWeek: “Persistent deficits of this size will put upward pressure on long-term interest rates, crowding out investment and stunting long-term growth.” Interest payments will continue to grow, she warns, rivaling defense expenditures by 2019; investor anxiety could rise, the dollar’s value could fall, and another global crisis could explode.

Neither party is taking these warnings seriously enough. Republicans have decided to oppose all revenue increases of any kind, period. That’s not economic policy, that’s theological dogma, and theology is not a good basis for legislative compromise.