It used to be both better & worse in that regard. Remember pork barrel spending? Or earmarks, but I like saying pork barrel.

That's where someone in the House wanted to pass a bill, but it wasn't quite popular enough to get through without being completely compromised, or with messed up amendments added to it like above. Basically, partisan politics as usual. However, if you wanted to glean a few votes from the other party, you could include a pork barrel clause, which is the creation or expansion of a federal program in another congressperson's district. An small one-time payment for infrastructure maintenance, public works funding, a small expansion to agriculture subsidies, etc. A slight increase in funding for an extant program, where the money would positively effect another congressperson's constituency. It's a bribe, but not to the congressperson so much as making the congressperson's constituency like them more.

And that's how bills were passed for years and years. In 2011 Obama said he'd veto anything with an earmark in it, and Congress also adopted a ban on earmark amendments, so the practice has stopped for the most part. And as a result, congress has passed fewer bills and along more partisan lines. Earmarks were a way to get some bipartisan support, but whether that was enough to justify their existence is a question for philosophers.