Give the United States Senate credit for doing something that hasn’t been seen in Congress for years. On Tuesday, Republicans and Democrats alike came together to pass the trillion dollar Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. By a vote of 69-30, the Senate gave President Joe Biden n essential piece of his agenda for the country.

The infrastucture bill is huge, with $550 billion in new spending over five years for roads and bridges, for shoring up our power grid against cyberattacks, for boosting broadband in remote areas. It will help shore up coastlines, and pay for cleaner, healthier water supplies.

It is going to jack up the federal deficit, no question, about $256 billion over 10 years. But this is a piece of legislation that needed to be done.

What’s coming next is another question. Biden wants a $3.5 trillion package of spending for child care, elder care, health and environment, programs that make conservatives cringe and liberals salivate.

In the pre-infrastructure congress, this would probably be considered dead on arrival in the Senate, where the 50-50 split gives Democrats control only via the tiebreaker vote of Vice President Kamala Harris.

But if the Senate can work through the issues as they did with the infrastructure bill, if moderates in both parties can assert their power as they did in Tuesday’s vote, perhaps a workable solution is possible.

It is amazing what Congress can get done when it is not playing partisan hardball. The infrastructure vote showed us that, and we should hope that there is more cooperation coming in the future.