What if there aren't jobs for those people when the temporary work runs out?
You spend a bit more until the economy does recover. So long as the recession is expected to be short term (i.e. a few years) and not permanent or long term, then you don't have so much of a problem. History has shown that over the long term economies will grow at a fairly consistent rate (the amount escapes me atm, IIRC it's around 1-2% pa), so it would be unrealistic to expect things not to recover. You would only say 'enough is enough' if you believed that you wouldn't have such a recovery eventually.
what should have happened during all of those years of economic growth was government programs that were wasteful (most of them) should have been cut and the deficit should have been paid down rather than exploding. Part of the reason for our current crisis is the size of the deficit, adding onto is hardly a way to solve the problem. You don't dig yourself out of hole by digging the hold deeper
While I agree with the first part (it's pretty much exactly what I've been saying), I disagree with the second. The economic cycle has it's ups and downs - during the ups you should be reducing the deficit (and ideally creating a surplus), but during the downs you should then increase the deficit. The result is that instead of a 'boom-bust' style economy you create one with smooth, steadily, reliable growth. Because you don't grow excessively you're far less likely to suffer negative growth, meaning confidence will be far higher, businesses can plan further in the future, can undertake investment with greater confidence/less risk, and you benefit overall as a result.
It's too late to save now, but that shouldn't mean the second part is similarly abandoned - it would still be better to borrow now (and repay it in the next growth period) than to let the recession get even worse - for a start you'd help avoid some of the 'negative spiral' effects such as demand falling causing firms to fire staff to cut costs causing demand to fall further.
We were told in October that TARP would 'solve' the crisis
I'm not supporting that if you noticed - I was dubious at the time whether it was a good idea (since the only reasons I could think of for trying to justify it were never really made, making me doubt whether such reasons existed), and nothings happened since to really make me change that view. It's essentially spending money to boost banks balance sheets, and hoping that will feed through to increased loans and hence increased demand, as opposed to just spending that money directly (and/or giving it to people who will spend it)
Few people that are not currently working in "road" construction (they don't need carpenters and roofers to make roads) will not be getting that new BO job
True there may be issues with accessability to certain markets and how easily transferable skills are for them. I've no problem with someone who argues that money shouldn't be spent in x area because of that (since if new workers can't get to that market then the whole point of the spending in the first place is largely negated). However until now I haven't seen anyone trying to argue that. To be clear though I have no problem with tempoary jobs that won't last where it is fairly easy for people to switch into that occupation. In fact to achieve the aim of boosting demand, the government could take it to the extreme and hire people to dig holes, then hire more people to fill in those same holes (and make the jobs low paying to attract those with the highest marginal propensity to spend). Similarly a less extreme version would be to get people to do a job that machines could do slightly more efficiently (such as helping build roads) if using the machines would take too much time in training.
