It will take a couple of years, hundreds of thousands of people and billions in equipment to cleanup the Gulf, even if the hole is plugged today.
Solve three problems in one go:
- Clean the Gulf
- Create jobs
- Give undocumented migrants citizenship
It's a simple equation:
We need lots and lots of people in a massive cleanup operation.
I would like to see a Gulf Recovery Act that achieves three goals in one act:
Hire hundreds of thousands of workers in 3 month "tours of civic duty", paid at a livable wage. BP can pick up most of the bill, bankrupting itself in the process. At it's current valuation of $132 billion, we should trigger the pottery barn rule: you broke the gulf, you bought the gulf.
The hundreds of thousands of workers needed would be the equivalent of a WPA program, creating jobs, bailing out the middle and lower class for a change and allowing America to work ourselves out of the recession.
Additionally: Any undocumented immigrant who joins the program will be eligible for naturalization after the third tour (they get paid for the work at the same rate as citizens of course).
If you like a final sweetener: house all those hundreds of thousands of workers by rebuilding housing in the still destroyed areas of New Orleans, turning the housing over to the former residents of New Orleans repatriated after the program or during the program if they are volunteering for a tour.
Start towards a solution to the Gulf catastrophe, bootstrap the economy, bail out the middle class, massively reduce unemployment, make immigration reform easier through work-to-citizenship, rebuild New Orleans
I'm sure I'm missing the point, I'm naive, it would be impossible, I don't understand the USA etc. But then again, I bet the WPA and Social Security were considered impossible before they were enacted.