Less than 10 months after taking office and several days after his party suffered a stinging defeat in the Virginia governor’s race, President Biden achieved one of his long-sought goals: a bipartisan agreement that would make major investments in all 50 states for years to come.

Shortly before midnight, when the House of Representatives passed the bill 228-206 with the backing of more than 10 Republicans, Biden’s political fortunes appeared to suddenly change. After seeing his poll numbers slump for weeks, he had suddenly fulfilled a core campaign promise and notched a major victory after months of legislative gridlock.

“I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to suggest that we took a monumental step forward as a nation,” Biden said on Saturday at the White House, flanked by Vice President Harris. “We did something long overdue, that has long been talked about in Washington, but never actually done.”

Biden called the bill a “once-in-a-generation” investment that would create millions of jobs and improve America’s economic standing.

Biden said the measure included the most significant investment in roads and bridges in 70 years; the most significant investment in passenger rail in 50 years; and the most significant investment in public transit in history. Biden said he and Harris would have a formal signing ceremony for the measure “soon,” citing the desire for those who worked on the legislation to be able to attend.

"For all you at home who feel left behind and forgotten in an economy that’s changing so rapidly — this bill is for you,” Biden said. “The vast majority of the thousands of jobs that will be created do not require a college degree.”

“This is a blue collar blueprint to rebuild America, and it’s long overdue.”

Biden also said both the House and Senate would soon approve his Build Back Better act.

The approximately $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill — which includes roughly $550 billion in new spending — now heads to Biden’s desk for enactment. The Senate first passed the bill in August. The measure had languished in the House for several months as liberal lawmakers sought to use their leverage over the plan to advance Biden’s larger climate and social spending bill, but Democrats reached a deal late Friday night to proceed.

The breakthrough followed a brutal election night for Democrats on Tuesday, and a summer in which the White House was roiled by the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan and the surging coronavirus delta variant.

Once law, the infrastructure package would be the second major legislative achievement of Biden’s presidency, following the March stimulus law. But unlike that measure, the infrastructure package enjoyed broad bipartisan support, winning even the backing of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Biden had tried to encourage a bipartisan approach to the bill for months, hoping it would serve as a model for other initiatives.

Some of the key authors of the bill, such as Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio), sought to break through partisan gridlock and deliver a package that conservatives and liberals would support. They were able to design the bill in a way that won the backing of business groups and labor unions without financing everything through big tax increases.

The White House is expected to emphasize that prior administrations — including former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump — failed to approve infrastructure legislation despite growing calls for action from labor leaders, the business community, and experts alarmed by the nation’s degrading public works systems. Trump had long talked about passing a massive infrastructure package, but his advisers never coalesced around a strategy and “Infrastructure Week” became a running joke among his aides. As those efforts languished, America’s infrastructure problems grew, eventually ranking behind a dozen other developed countries, raising concerns about safety and the nation’s economic competitiveness.

“It’s a game-changer for the country: The first comprehensive infrastructure plan we’ve had since Dwight D. Eisenhower created the interstate highway system” in the 1950s, said Ed Rendell, a Biden supporter and former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania. “It will be a big shot in the arm.”

Biden gave lawmakers space to cut the deal, hosting Democrats and Republicans to the White House over the summer as negotiations intensified. The bill that passed the Senate in August stayed intact over the past three months. But it remained dormant while House Democrats fought over other parts of their party’s agenda. Biden’s poll numbers slid over that span as the bill remained tied up and questions were raised about whether it would ever become law.

The infrastructure agreement includes major new infusions of funding for roads, bridges, and highways; tens of billions of dollars to expand passenger and freight rail; the biggest source of new funding to revamp the nation’s drinking system; and tens of billions for its power grid, among other measures.

Biden unveiled an approximately $2 trillion jobs plan this spring that became the core the infrastructure proposal, as well as another $2 trillion proposal focused on education, climate, and parts of the safety net that Democrats are still debating in Congress.

Major legislative obstacles to both packages slowed their progress, and for months Washington has been consumed by gridlock and tense negotiations that stretched on for days and generated negative publicity for the administration.

Many congressional aides were initially skeptical of Biden’s insistence on a bipartisan infrastructure bill, believing that Republican lawmakers would never coalesce around a deal with the White House. And many Republicans did ultimately reject the measure, alleging it would amount to wasteful spending. But 19 Republicans joined 50 Democrats in backing the bill during the August vote. And more than 10 Republicans in the House helped shepherd the bill into law Friday night.

Many of the Republicans who supported the measure were motivated by a mixture of support for the underlying policies and a desire to show that they could work with Biden productively if the White House chose to pursue measures in a bipartisan way.

“Passing major legislation in good faith shows that Democrats don’t need to get rid of getting the filibuster, because Republicans will operate in good faith when there’s an area for compromise — that was part of the calculation for working with the president,” said Donald Schneider, who served as chief economist to Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee.

Nonpartisan estimates have found the legislation will add more than $250 billion to the deficit over 10 years, as it relies on a series of revenue gimmicks due to GOP aversion to raising taxes on the wealthy and the White House’s refusal to raise taxes on Americans earning under $400,000 per year.

Liberal economists say the measure only partially addresses the nation’s economic needs and that the White House must be committed to doing far more. Darrick Hamilton, an economist at the New School, said Biden’s presidency would be “inadequate and incomplete” if he only passes the bipartisan infrastructure bill. Biden’s plans to enact universal prekindergarten, measures to combat climate change, and other welfare expansions remain tied up in both the House and Senate, with no clear resolution at hand.

“If this is all we end up with, then it’s a missed opportunity and more of the same,” Hamilton said. “it’s definitely not enough.”

Still, the White House will welcome the passage of even part of their agenda. Biden’s approval rating has slipped steadily for months as the administration was caught flat-footed by the resurgence of the pandemic, unexpected inflation, and crises abroad. But on Friday, White House aides saw reason to believe their fortunes could be turning — with signs of the virus receding, the economy posting its best jobs data in months on Friday, and progress emerging on long-stalled parts of the president’s economic agenda.

Rendell, the former governor of Pennsylvania, urged the administration to send senior officials to every significant infrastructure groundbreaking across the country next year. He said every congressional Democrats should hammer the following message: “President Trump could not do infrastructure for years with a Republican Congress, but President Biden delivered the biggest infrastructure package since Eisenhower.”