Yes, bipartisanship is ailing but it is not totally dead:
The House is expected to vote Thursday on a jobs bill that would mark rare agreement between the Obama administration and House Republicans.
The proposal called the JOBS Act, short for “Jump-starting Our Business Startups,” comprises of six measures aimed at removing barriers to small business investment.
Republican leaders and the White House sent signals of a possible detente last week as they huddled over a lunch of salmon risotto.
“The president was very optimistic about moving that bill through the House,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said following the February 29 meeting. “Frankly, it was a very good luncheon, and I’m encouraged by the attitude and the tone that we had during the meeting.”
White House spokesman Jay Carney called the lunch meeting “cordial and constructive,” and cited proposals to help small businesses as an area of possible agreement.
An election year blip? Perhaps. But it’s a start.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.