There is literally not enough work that is of any value to any person to keep every low-skilled worker occupied. The term "zero marginal product worker" has been popping up for good reason. What you're advocating would both cost more than "welfare" and add to the sum total of human misery. But you probably already knew that.
That's a recycled corporate argument, which supposes an economic utopia without welfare. In the real world, a welfare recipient who sweeps streets is often more economically useful to the public than someone who sits on their duff. The exception is welfare mothers with children.
Well, if you want someone sweeping the street, hire him to do that, instead of keeping him on welfare.
but we can't have the free market running things, that's unconservative and unamerican (see bans on tesla sales and the vw/uaw fiasco)
These are the people who will never be off welfare anyways, so why not make them work for it instead of doing nothing.
Because there is too much people and not enough work? Either we accept than some people won't work, or we reduce the lenght of the work week to allow more people to work. Sure, we could create useless street sweepers jobs like someone wanted, but, it's like the USSR. Creating useless jobs to have full employment.
So you're suggesting something that would never happen without reducing everyone's pay instead of something like bridge/road repair which would benefit the whole country? Most people will obviously only be on welfare a short time and that's what it should be there for. For the people who will never be productive I'd rather make them work for a living while still getting that welfare.
I think what you're forgetting is that, to the extent that government can directly create jobs, it's generally not jobs that someone who is chronically on the dole and unemployable can do.
You want more roads and bridges to be fixed. That work will be done by people who already do construction and repair-related jobs. It's not something that the Republican stereotype of a
weed-smoking high school diploma holder who has never held a legitimate job before can just waltz in to.
If you want the government to hire people who are so badly qualified or shiftless that they cannot or will not find a job elsewhere, then no wonder your party thinks government can't do anything right. In your world, it's being staffed by a bunch of semi-literate druggies.
If you took a run-of-the-mill member of the "permanent underclass" and plopped them down in the middle of my workplace, I and everyone else would probably be less productive than if they weren't there. They'd just be getting in the way. Please just keep them at home and let me pay my taxes. I guarantee you every gainfully employed person from a janitor to a construction worker to a physicist to an investment banker would tell you the same thing. 
