WASHINGTON — Congress is ready to start crafting compromise legislation addressing the nation’s opioid abuse crisis, which should be an easier lift than other issues facing lawmakers. The reason: Both parties have an election-year incentive to show they’re tackling a problem that’s killing people in America’s biggest cities and smallest towns.

The House passed three bills setting up grants and taking steps to battle the drug epidemic, the last of 18 measures on the issue the chamber overwhelmingly passed this week. Members of both parties hailed the measures, though Democrats complained that none provided any money for the programs and anti-drug advocates called the bills a modest first step.

“It’s a very important start, but we need dollars, we need statutory changes and we need sustained focus and attention,” said Robert Morrison, executive director of the National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors.

With the Senate approving its own version in March, lawmakers now hope to send President Barack Obama a compromise bill before Congress begins a long summer recess in July. This week’s House votes contrasted with the partisan disputes that have hindered congressional efforts to address the Zika virus, Puerto Rican debt and the lead-poisoned water of Flint, Michigan.

Government figures show the growing toll from misuse of opioids — addictive pain-killing narcotics and heroin — which in 2014 killed nearly 29,000 people, triple the death rate of 2000. More than 2 million people were abusing prescription opioid painkillers and nearly 500,000 more were addicted to heroin in 2012.