There are no easy fixes right now and thinking that there are is a big mistake.
Like when people say if we cut spending everything will be fixed? I know you're not saying that, but you see those statements everywhere, despite the fact that spending right now is not the problem, and if we cut spending, we lay people off and unemployment goes up and that's not what we need.
What we need, is to put millions of people to work. I think borrowing $1T from China and upgrading our infrastructure (for real this time) while maybe throwing in some high speed rail projects, would be exactly what we need to get jobs growing again. Plus, if you spend the money on rail or maybe green energy, then those projects need workers to run and maintain them after they're built, so there are long lasting job implications.
We've spent billions of "infrastructure" and gotten bridges to nowhere and rail stations no one uses. Why will it be different this time?
High speed rail is an economic loser, and has been everywhere in this country, with the exception of Boston-DC.
Green energy is anotehr gov't boondoggle. Spain found out the hard way.