I would counter that "completely unreasonable" is a matter of individual perception.
If a bill to say, cap prescription drug prices included add-on language that offered tax loopholes to pharma companies and still passed a hypothetical 50/50 congress, that add-on language can't be considered unreasonable because:
1) Both sides voted for it to pass, and
2) It must have been reasonable enough that the opposing side thought what they got in return (cap on drug prices) was worth the squeeze.
Obviously a 50/50 congress isn't the norm and sometimes control over the house/senate lines in one party's hands, but them's the breaks.
So add-ons might be unreasonable to you, but perfectly reasonable to another person, and even neutral to another. That's the art of the deal so to speak. But at the end of the day something got done and it's the thing no one in our government wants to work out nowadays.
Regarding the example you gave of
That's where the problem begins with politicians. They're more worried about assigning blame and gaslighting to make the other side look bad (GOP and dems both) than they are seeing things for the finished product. For every omelette you make you have to break a certain number of eggs. Yeah, we all want everyone to be in agreement, but it simply doesn't work that way. Never has, never will. But you still need to come to a compromise and live with it. Someone has to be the wolf and someone has to be the lamb in every situation in life. You just try to moderate it as much as possible and if both sides could see that, they'd be able to work together and say, "We'll take turns being the lamb." But stubbornness and pride don't let it happen anymore like it used to. These people would rather lose a mile than give an inch.
In my example above, one side wants caps on drug prices and to stick it to big pharma at the same time, and because they know they can't have both they stonewall instead of choosing one or the other. And we suffer because of it and nothing's ever done about the problem.
