Big News….Was there any doubt?  Will the Repubs keep quiet?  And will it work?

After a frenzied month of legislating, the House and Senate produced an economic stimulus bill estimated Friday to cost $787 billion, combining tax cuts with one-time spending on infrastructure investments, expanded unemployment benefits and other programs.

It passed both chambers on a largely party-line vote, winning the support of no Republicans in the House and only three in the Senate.

The outcome amounted to the first significant fruits of November’s Democratic victory, in which Obama handily won the presidency while his party expanded its congressional majorities. For the first time in 14 years, Democrats have the power to legislate without serious Republican interference, and Friday they reveled in what many described as a new dawn for liberalism.

Democrats claimed a mandate to beef up the federal government’s role in areas including transportation, alternative energy and school construction – and to take on whopping deficits to do so – citing a shift in popular opinion provoked by some of the most vexing domestic problems the country has encountered in decades.

“The bottom line is: With this downturned economy, there is no place to turn but government,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat who headed his party’s Senate campaign efforts last fall. “Most of the Republicans are resisting that, but they’re just out of touch with the times.”

Rough breakdown of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

— Appropriations: $308.3 billion (39.2 percent)

— Direct spending (unemployment, health spending, etc): $267 billion (33.9 percent)

— Tax cuts: $211.8 billion (26.9 percent)

Examples of California’s share

— Medicaid: $11 billion

— State stabilization fund: $5.8 billion

— Community development block grants: $127 million

— Food stamps: $1.6 billion

— Public housing capital fund: $118 million

— HUD HOME program funding: $324 million

— Homelessness Prevention Fund: $190 million

— State energy program: $224 million

— Weatherization: $192 million

— Child care development block grant: $220 million

— Head Start: $82 million

— Title 1 Education for Disadvantaged: $1.6 billion

— Special education: $1.2 billion

— Education technology: $114 million

— Community services block grant: $89 million

— Dislocated workers state grants: $225 million

— State employment service grants: $45 million

— Law enforcement: $229 million

— Highway investments: $2.6 billion

— Public transit: $1 billion

— Drinking water: $160.2 million

— Clean water: $284.6 million

— CalFed bay delta program: $50 million

— Food banks: $19.5 million

— National School Lunch Program: $9.7 million

— Department of Education Vocational Rehabilitation: $47 million

— Senior Meals program: $13 million

— Emergency Food and Shelter program: $13 million

Source: Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.