Amid partisan bickering over the government’s surveillance powers and the president’s budget plan, Democrats and Republicans in the House last week reached a noteworthy accord on the global AIDS initiative.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee, in an election year no less, approved a reauthorization of President Bush’s 2003 AIDS funding program by voice vote. Discussion on the bill touched on many sensitive points, such as social policy provisions on abstinence education and condom programs.

But Democrats, Republicans and the White House worked to reach a compromise that didn’t fully satisfy the right or left — similar to the landmark 2003 bill authored by late Reps. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) and Tom Lantos (D-Calif.). That year, the two leaders of the panel, then called the International Relations Committee, threaded the legislative needle to pass what is arguably one of Bush’s most overlooked accomplishments.

The reauthorization of the legislation threatened to get bogged down in nasty politics, which would have reflected poorly on the lower chamber. If Hyde and Lantos — polar opposites on the ideological spectrum — could strike a deal, then there was little excuse for their successors not to do the same.

Easier said than done. Yet Foreign Affairs Committee acting Chairman Howard Berman (D-Calif.) and ranking member Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) worked with the Bush administration and ironed out a deal.

The bill seeks to authorize $50 billion over five years for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria while providing benchmarks to improve the transparency and accountability of the Global Fund.

“This bill is not perfect,” Berman said, “but no compromise ever is.”

As mentioned in this space previously, partisanship is not a bad word. It’s part of the legislative process and healthy for democracy.

But there are times when partisanship is properly curtailed, however, and this was one of them. Berman noted that 20 million people have died from HIV/AIDS and 40 million worldwide are HIV-positive. This was a time for statesmanship, and the Foreign Affairs Committee answered the call. In short, this was good government.

The legislation is far from signed into law, and congressional staffers who helped craft the measure warn that it must persevere through the treacherous waters of the Senate.

Still, this agreement, as Berman said last week, “is in the best spirit of the great leaders of this committee who guided the 2003 act into law, Chairman Lantos and Chairman Hyde. It’s appropriate and fitting that this legislation is named for them.”

We agree.