Bipartisan bills still happen, but when it comes to climate change or improving our health care system or reforming election laws or changing the tax code so th

Bipartisan bills still happen, but when it comes to climate change or improving our health care system or reforming election laws or changing the tax code so the extremely wealthy pay effective rates that are in line with what the middle class or moderately wealthy pay, there just aren't any Republican votes for those things. Bipartisanship is a nice idea, but if two parties are ideologically opposed then sometimes no compromise is possible. The options in the U.S. to move legislation then become: use budget reconciliation and 50 votes plus the vice president, get rid of (or seriously reform) the filibuster, or wait for a 60-vote Senate supermajority. The latter happened in 2009 and lasted for a couple of weeks (it took a long time for Al Franken to be seated, and then Ten Kennedy died), and may never happen again in our lifetimes.