Finally, a deficit hawk gets it.

Former Comptroller General David Walker, now CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Institute, has co-written an op-ed with the Lawrence Mishel, president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute, in which they agree that federal budget deficits must rise in the short term so the government can take more aggressive measures to boost employment.

As Walker, who headed the General Accountability Office for 10 years, and Mishel put it in a piece published last week (maybe it's just me, but I've seen nothing whatsoever on this in the press), "We must accept higher deficits in the short-term in order to put people back to work."

The reason this is significant is Walker has until now focused on the evils of budget deficits, at least in the long run, and has been at the forefront of efforts to rein in entitlement spending. But now he admits that concern about long-term deficits is worse than irrelevant to the fix we currently find ourselves in.

The two noted that public debate over this issue, as it is typically framed, makes it difficult for Washington to take effective action.

"The difficulty is that many politicians and news organizations often cast deficit debates as a dichotomy: You either care about them or you don't," they wrote in the op-ed for the website, Politico.

"But this is rarely accurate. The fact that the two of us, who have philosophical differences on the proper role of government, find much to agree on about deficits is a testament to the importance of dropping this useless dichotomy and finally talking about deficits in a reasonable way."

Walker and Mishel cited the obvious distinction between short-term deficits that reflect lower tax revenue because of recession and the longer-term structural ones produced by entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security because of an aging population and out-of-control health care costs.

And while the two agreed that "immediate steps" should be taken to establish a means of reducing the structural deficits that lie ahead, they noted that care must be taken to maintain "the type of public investments that can help fuel broad-based economic growth while strengthening the safety net for our most vulnerable populations." Walker and Mishel added that "we should take into account growing retirement insecurity as employer pension systems erode and personal savings falter."

I understand why those opposed to Medicare and Social Security would obfuscate the real issues here. But why does the mainstream press fail to see that that's what they're up to? Could it be that its owners share that enmity?