( CNN ) -- Now that Republicans have won control of the Senate , Washington is awash with rumors and speculation about how President Barack Obama and the GOP Congress will get along . Armchair Dr. Phils are already yakking about how the two sides should just get along `` for the sake of the children ... er , country . '' But this is not a troubled marriage . It 's more complicated than even that . Rather than look to the psychobabble of self-help , we should look at the hard-earned successes of difficult peace negotiations between nations . President Obama , House Speaker John Boehner and presumptive Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell should begin with what peace negotiators call `` Confidence Building Measures . '' CBM 's between nation begin with cultural exchanges -- like sending American ping-pong players to China . This is why a bourbon summit would be useful , and I hope Sen. McConnell takes the President up on his offer . But once you 've broken the ice by breaking out the bourbon , where do you go ? What issues do you start negotiating ? The easier ones . It is a troubling sign that , in their post-election press conferences , both Obama and McConnell kept circling back to immigration . At one level this is obvious : Immigration is an important national priority on which the two parties seem deeply divided . That 's why they should not start with immigration . Instead they should start small . One place where Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton found they could agree , when they were at this juncture in the mid-1990s was biomedical research . Each wanted to build on America 's lead in the field , and so they passed legislation to double funding for the National Institutes of Health over five years . ( The five years extended into the George W. Bush presidency , and to his credit he honored the deal . ) The NIH has been in the news recently , since its director , Dr. Francis Collins , said we would already have an Ebola vaccine but for budget cuts . It is simply true that , after the Clinton-Gingrich-Bush increase , NIH funding has flat-lined . In fact , NIH has lost 25 % of its purchasing power , due to budget constraints and the moronic policy sequester . Boosting NIH would be good for the economy . A $ 3 billion investment championed by Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin and signed into law by President George H.W . Bush paid for the research that decoded the human genome . That $ 3 billion investment has spurred -- get this -- $ 965 billion in economic activity , including 53,000 new jobs and $ 290 billion in personal income , according to a study by the Battelle Technology Partnership Practice for United for Medical Research , a coalition of research institutions , patient and health advocates and private industry . Boosting NIH is also good politics . I am on the Board of Visitors of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston . MD Anderson is the number-one recipient of research grants from the National Cancer Institute , which is part of NIH . And you know which senators have MD Anderson in their state ? You got it : Ted Cruz and John Cornyn . One a tea party favorite and one a Chamber of Commerce hero . If they would get on board with boosting NIH funding , a whole lot of their constituents on both sides of the aisle would be happy . Championing biomedical research did not dent Newt Gingrich 's conservative credentials , nor did it hurt Bill Clinton among liberals . Because cancer knows no partisan boundaries . One in two American men will develop cancer . One in two . And one in three American women will . If you 're reading this at the office ( I promise not to tell ) look around : Half the guys and a third of the women will , one day , sit in an office and hear a doc say , `` You have cancer . '' Think about that as you have dinner with your family , when you 're at a football game this weekend or in church this Sunday . President Obama lost his mother and grandmother to cancer . Mitch McConnell beat polio . Each of them know the pain of loss and the promise of biomedical research . So my advice to them is to start with the basics : basic science , and then work their way up to the more intractable problems .
Paul Begala : Bourbon summit for Obama , Romney. Here 's what to talk about : . Medical research funding was common ground for Gingrich , Clinton at similar political juncture . Begala says they pushed doubling NIH funding in 5 years ; it benefited nation , economy . Begala : No NIH funding stalled . Boosting it is good politics , a good place for the two to start .