The government doesn't commit itself to programs that create jobs because the people we've got up in Washington don't really care about ordinary Americans. All they care about are the corporations who make it worth their while to serve in government.

Watching the PBS American Experience The 30s series episode on the CCC, as I imagine the original questioner had, the question again is, why don't we have a CCC type progrm that, as in the 30s:
- targets young adults without skills from families
- uses the military training and organization model (surely some retired military trainers are looking for ways to continue serving?)
- pays about $900 a month with $750 sent home to their family and $150 a month for spending money
- provides clothing, room, board, comprehensive medical care, and training in camps like the military
- employs engineers, agriculture, and conservation experts to direct the work and training
- rebuilds and restores national, state, and local parks as a first priority because these can be spread around everywhere and provide visible results
- cleans up brown fields and makes them productive with community farms and power projects

As the episode notes, FDR was very political, but the value to society was certainly very high because young men who didn't have work and who weren't likely to get work soon were employed and given both the skill of working as well as useful work skills, but communities got real capital investments that they otherwise wouldn't have afforded themselves, capital infrastructure that in many communities is still giving back to the community today three quarters of a century later.

But perhaps in our modern economy, capitalism does not mean creating productive capital, but instead taking capital assets and consuming them because we are a nation in its old age and like all old folk, you consume the capital you built up when you were young and prouctive...

Actually, "the public" has been aware of massive Federal debt spending for decades. This isn't new. However, normal people like myself can't match the campaign subsidies from Goldman Sachs, so our views get no traction.

Republicans have not been economically conservative since before Reagan - and they do not propose to stop debt spending in any way.

In fact, the only proposal Republicans have had for the past 20 years is to cut taxes. However, they had their time to try their policies under Bush.. and failed miserably. Go read Bruce Bartlett if you want to understand the incoherence of the Republican economic agenda.