Congressional Demos are saying there is too much tax cut and not enough infrastructure in the bill, so there is hope.
The other interesting question, though, is how much of that infrastructure requires construction workers working outdoors physically building stuff, and how many workers do we really have who can deal with that? There are plenty of people who can do office jobs whose bodies are not really rugged enough for that type of work. I have read that when the Big Dig was going on in Boston, there was more than enough for work anyone who wanted to do skilled physical labor on that project, and lots of opportunities to learn on the job.
Well, I think its important to be up front that these would be public investment, not make work projects. The sad fact is, that our economy has been distorted away from heavy industry to the financial sector. When GE capital is the biggest part of GE, something is out of kilter. The wrenching adjustment back has to be made. I don't want the government to stand in the way of that.
Maybe some kind of explicit make work projects will have to be done for these white collar workers. But the rail projects aren't all things to all people and they won't be make work for white collars.
The real value is catching up for 30 years worth of infrastructure investment that hasn't been done. These investments have real value and offer real returns for decades after they are built. In the case of RR there are important network effects that hard to measure, but are nevertheless there, and valuable.