The trillion-dollar infrastructure package backed by a bipartisan group of 11 Republicans and 10 Democrats surely has plenty of waste in it. But what’s in the package is not nearly as interesting as what is left out of the package — which points in turn to how a divided Washington can once again work.

Despite Democrats’ often triumphalist talk and their “trifecta” on the federal level, controlling the House, the Senate, and the White House, this is still a very divided country. Democrats control the 50-50 Senate solely on the strength of Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote. Democrats have a razor-thin House majority of 220 to 211. President Joe Biden was about 43,000 votes in three states from losing the 2020 election.