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How do you, or the Fed in this case, earmark where a dollar goes? Paying interest in excess reserves is the only mechanism I've heard for them to keep money "locked up." Will that continue forever? What's the point of increasing the money supply if not to let it circulate?

Historically that would have been public works employment through infrastructure investment.

The government could have printed a bunch of money to build a giant nuclear is solar plant, and then have a revenue generating, publicly owned asset at the end of it. Instead the government printed the money to prop up existing asset prices.

Just like increasing a company's cap table, there's nothing wrong so long as the new money is converted into a new asset of value that remains in the company's balance sheet.

In fact, a well managed money printing event should dilute private wealth and replace it with public wealth, which is the sort of green new deal I support.

This exactly. Money was pumped into a deflationary environment.

That's literally how they define inflation, so money earmarked for consumer goods is the most likely to "cause inflation" by the Feds definition