That’s a joke, of course.
Back in FDR’s day, public works projects were about brawny men with shovels, so they were a good way of providing jobs to the unemployed. Today, they involve lots of permitting and specialized expertise in the operation of sophisticated machinery. As a result, they aren’t a great way of putting the unemployed to work; the public works component of the 2009 stimulus was a failure.
There are plenty of good reasons to support an ambitious infrastructure bill, but providing jobs in a crisis is not really one of them. I just don’t think the timing is right for it; the emphasis today needs to be on simple measures that temporarily alleviate pain while the economy is in a coma.
The bottom line is that you can expect plenty of GOP senators to display their tattered bona fides as deficit fighters on this issue, so it probably won’t happen, even if Trump and the Democrats somehow reach an agreement, which seems highly unlikely.