WASHINGTON —

President Joe Biden's signature on a $1 trillion infrastructure bill represents a historic achievement at a time of deeply fractured politics. But the compromises needed to bridge the political divide suggest that the spending might not be as transformative as Biden has promised for the U.S. economy.

Faced with flagging support as the U.S. continues to slog through a pandemic and rising inflation, the president has treated infrastructure as proof that government can function again. Ahead of Monday's signing ceremony, he instructed his Cabinet on Friday to rigorously police the coming investments in roads, bridges, water systems, broadband, ports, electric vehicles and the power grid to ensure they pay off.

"It's hard, but we can still come together to get something big done for the American people," Biden said. "It will create millions of new jobs. It will grow the economy. And we'll win the world economic competition that we're engaged in in the second quarter of the 21st century with China and many other countries around the world."

Biden held off on signing the hard-fought infrastructure deal after it passed on Nov. 5 until legislators would be back from a congressional recess and could join in a splashy bipartisan event. The gathering Monday on the White House lawn will include governors and mayors of both parties and labor and business leaders. On Sunday night before the signing, the White House announced Mitch Landrieu, the former New Orleans mayor, would coordinate the implementation of the infrastructure spending.

The president began the process of selling it to the broader public with a trip last week to the Port of Baltimore. He'll go to New Hampshire on Tuesday to visit a bridge on the state's "red list" for repair and to Detroit on Wednesday for a stop at General Motors' electric vehicle assembly plant.

In order to achieve a bipartisan deal, the president had to cut back his initial ambition to spend $2.3 trillion on infrastructure by more than half. The bill that becomes law on Monday in reality includes about $550 billion in new spending over 10 years, since some of the expenditures in the package were already planned. Yet the administration still views the bill as a national project with a broad range of investments and the potential ways to improve people's lives with clean drinking water and high-speed internet.

Historians, economists and engineers interviewed by The Associated Press welcomed Biden's efforts. But they stressed that $1 trillion was not nearly enough to overcome the government's failure for decades to maintain and upgrade the country's infrastructure. The politics essentially forced a trade-off in terms of potential impact not just on the climate but on the ability to outpace the rest of the world this century and remain the dominant economic power.

"We've got to be sober here about what our infrastructure gap is in terms of a level of investment and go into this eyes wide open, that this is not going to solve our infrastructure problems across the nation," said David Van Slyke, dean of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

Biden also tried unsuccessfully to tie the infrastructure package to passage of a broader package of $1.85 trillion in proposed spending on families, health care and a shift to renewable energy that could help address climate change. That measure has yet to gain sufficient support from the narrow Democratic majorities in the Senate and House. Biden continues to work to appease skeptics of the broader package such as Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., while also holding on to the most liberal Democrats.

The haggling over infrastructure has shown that Biden can still bring together Democrats and Republicans, even as tensions continue to mount over the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump who falsely believe that Biden was not legitimately elected president. Yet the result is a product that might not meet the existential threat of climate change or the transformative legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose portrait hangs in Biden's Oval Office.

"Yes, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is a big deal," said Peter Norton, a history professor in the University of Virginia's engineering department. "But the bill is not transformational, because most of it is more of the same."

Norton compared the limited action on climate change to the start of World War II, when Roosevelt and Congress reoriented the entire U.S. economy after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Within two months, there was a ban on auto production. Dealerships had no new cars to sell for four years as factories focused on weapons and war materiel. To conserve fuel consumption, a national speed limit of 35 mph was introduced.

"The emergency we face today warrants a comparable emergency response," Norton said.

For his part, Biden has treated compromise as both a necessity and a virtue. It's evidence to the rest of the world that democracies can function and counters the economic and technological rise of an authoritarian China. When the agreement with Republican senators was first announced in June, he noted that everyone had to give up a little in order to achieve an infrastructure deal that eluded former presidents Barack Obama and Trump.

"Neither side got everything they want in this deal," Biden said at the time. "That's what it means to compromise."

The agreement ultimately got support from 19 Senate Republicans, including Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell. Thirteen House Republicans also voted for the infrastructure bill. An angry Trump issued a statement attacking "Old Crow" McConnell and other Republicans for cooperating on "a terrible Democrat Socialist Infrastructure Plan."

McConnell says the country "desperately needs" the new infrastructure money but has indicated that he plans to skip Monday's signing ceremony.

There are multiple ways of analyzing the size of the infrastructure bill. White House aides anchored their research to the historical benchmark of building the interstate highway system from 1957 to 1966. By that metric, Biden can rightly claim that the additional $550 billion in infrastructure spending would be more than double the cost of the highway system when adjusted by inflation.

But the bill also addresses years of deferred repairs and the removal of lead water pipes, reflecting the fact that the government failed to adequately fund infrastructure for several decades. Judged by the size of the need, Biden's spending is merely a start to close a massive gap.

Yale University economist Ray Fair studied the size of the U.S. infrastructure gap in a September research paper. He found a sharp decline in infrastructure investment as a percent of the overall U.S. economy starting in 1970, a trend shared by no other country, though some nations did begin to invest less in infrastructure somewhat later.

"The overall results thus suggest that the United States became less future-oriented, less concerned with future generations, beginning around 1970," Fair concluded. "This change has persisted."

When Fair looked at Biden's infrastructure bill, he examined the size of the shortfall if infrastructure investments had continued at the 1970 pace. He found that Biden's spending covered about 10% of a $5.2 trillion gap.

"The bottom line is that the current infrastructure bill is quite modest," Fair said.

LA VISTA, Neb. —

Many people celebrated Christmas far from home, leaning on Zoom calls and mailed gifts to get them through.

When a package didn't make it home, this family worried a tradition would be lost until a stranger stepped in to help.

Like many families across the world, the Negrete family traded Christmas celebrations with grandma and grandpa for conversations over Zoom.

"We were used to doing Christmas morning together," said Kylie Negrete. "We want them to be a part of our Christmas morning because they used to live next door to us."

Negrete asked her mother to send homemade Christmas cookies from Tennessee because that's what they ate together every holiday season.

"They mean so much to us because we weren't going to see my parents this holiday season," she said. "That's the only thing I was going to get to see are the cookies made by mom and by my stepdad."

By Christmas Eve, the cookies hadn't arrived until Negrete received a phone call by a man named Mike, who found a package addressed to her lying in the middle of the street.

Mike delivered the desserts to her home and Negrete was overwhelmed with thankfulness.

"I cried and I felt silly for crying but it was just the one thing I was going to get from my parents is that little bit of them are these cookies that they made from their heart," she said.

Although it was a smaller Christmas morning than years past, sometimes a little piece of home is just what you need.

"Even during these dark times where there's all these unknowns, a pandemic, everybody's lives have just been uprooted, it just goes to show that there's so much good in people," said Negrete.

President Joe Biden praised the Senate on Friday for edging the bipartisan infrastructure plan closer to passage, ahead of a key vote on the $1 trillion package.

As the president spoke from the White House, he compared the “historic investment” to building the transcontinental railroad or the interstate highway system — lofty themes he has touched on before as he nudges Congress along.

"It will enable us not only to build back, but to build back better than before the economic crisis hit," he said. "I know that body will move toward establishing the framework for the remainder of my build back better agenda."

The president’s note of encouragement offers a reset for lawmakers after frustrations mounted and tempers flared overnight as the Senate stalled out, unable to expedite the package to completion.

SEE MORE: What's In The Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill?

It’s nearing decision time for Congress, and particularly the Senate, to make gains on the president’s infrastructure priorities — first with the bipartisan bill that’s on track for passage as soon as this weekend, and quickly followed by Democrats' more sweeping $3.5 trillion budget blueprint they plan to shoulder on their own.

Called the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the thick bill is a first part of President Biden’s infrastructure agenda and would inject billions of new spending on roads, bridges, waterworks, broadband and other projects to virtually every corner of the nation. 

If approved by the Senate, it would next go to the House. A procedural vote on the package is set for Saturday.

Additional reporting by the Associated Press.

This story was originally reported by Jay Strubberg on Newsy.com

After much delay, senators unveiled a nearly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package, wrapping up days of painstaking work on the inches-thick bill and launching what is certain to be a lengthy debate over President Joe Biden's big priority.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act clocked in at some 2,700 pages, and senators could begin amending it soon. Despite the hurry-up-and-wait during a rare weekend session, emotions bubbled over once the bill was produced Sunday night. The final product was not intended to stray from the broad outline senators had negotiated for weeks with the White House. 

"We haven't done a large, bipartisan bill of this nature in a long time," said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. He said a final vote could be held "in a matter of days." 

A key part of Biden's agenda, the bipartisan bill is the first phase of the president's infrastructure plan. It calls for $550 billion in new spending over five years above projected federal levels, what could be one of the more substantial expenditures on the nation's roads, bridges, waterworks, broadband, and the electric grid in years.

Senators and staff labored behind the scenes for days to write the massive bill. It was supposed to be ready Friday, but by Sunday, even more glitches were caught and changes made.

Late Sunday, most of the 10 senators involved in the bipartisan effort rose on the Senate floor to mark the moment.

"We know that this has been a long and sometimes difficult process, but we are proud this evening to announce this legislation," said Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., a lead negotiator.

The bill showed "we can put aside our own political differences for the good of the country," she said.

Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, a Republican negotiator, said the final product will be "great for the American people."

Over the long weekend of starts and stops, Schumer repeatedly warned that he was prepared to keep lawmakers in Washington for as long as it took to complete votes on both the bipartisan infrastructure plan and a budget blueprint that would allow the Senate to begin work later this year on a massive, $3.5 trillion social, health and environmental bill.

Among the major new investments, the bipartisan package is expected to provide $110 billion for roads and bridges, $39 billion for public transit, and $66 billion for rail. There's also set to be $55 billion for water and wastewater infrastructure as well as billions for airports, ports, broadband internet, and electric vehicle charging stations.

The spending is broadly popular among lawmakers, bringing long-delayed capital for big-ticket items that cities and states can rarely afford on their own.

Paying for the package has been a challenge after senators rejected ideas to raise revenue from a new gas tax or other streams. Instead, it is being financed from funding sources that might not pass muster with deficit hawks, including repurposing some $205 billion in untapped COVID-19 relief aid, as well as unemployment assistance that was turned back by some states and relying on projected future economic growth.

"I've got real concerns with this bill," said Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah.

Bipartisan support from Republican and Democratic senators pushed the process along, and Schumer wanted the voting to be wrapped up before senators left for the August recess.

Last week, 17 GOP senators joined all Democrats in voting to start work on the bipartisan bill. That support largely held, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., voting yes in another procedural vote to nudge the process along in the 50-50 Senate, where 60 votes are needed to overcome a filibuster and advance legislation.

Whether the number of Republican senators willing to pass the bill grows or shrinks in the days ahead will determine if the president's signature issue can make it across the finish line.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said he expects Schumer to allow all senators to have a chance to shape the bipartisan bill and allow for amendments from members of both parties.

"I hope we can now pump the brakes a little bit and take the time and care to evaluate the benefits and the cost of this legislation," Cornyn said.

The bipartisan bill still faces a rough road in the House, where progressive lawmakers want a more robust package but may have to settle for this one to keep Biden's infrastructure plans on track. 

The outcome with the bipartisan effort will set the stage for the next debate over Biden's much more ambitious $3.5 trillion package, a strictly partisan pursuit of far-reaching programs and services including child care, tax breaks, and health care that touch almost every corner of American life. Republicans strongly oppose that bill, which would require a simple majority for passage. Final votes on that measure are not expected until fall.

This story was originally published by Alex Livingston and Simon Kaufman at Newsy, with contributions from The Associated Press.