There's a lot that doesn't make any sense. As you say, interest rates are low. Plenty of people are out of work. To me, that says, "perfect time to build and repair infrastructure!"

Whether you believe FDR's New Deal helped or hindered recovery from the Great Depression, the simple, business-oriented financials of it would seem to indicate that right now is the time to be building roads, trains, dams, nuclear plants, etc.

Instead, we cut funding to things which may pay off later in order to funnel money into which have an inevitable negative rate of return, like imprisoning people, security theater, and killing people on the other side of the globe.