Imagine that one day, a big tanker truck carrying gasoline is driving by The White House in Washington D.C. and tanker flips over. Noone is hurt, but all of the tanker truck's fuel is dumped out on The White House lawn. Now, imagine that President Obama and the White House staff gives the company that owns the truck a few days to clean up the mess, but the company starts dragging its feet. And let us also say that the fumes from all that fuel make living and working at the White House intolerable, so after a few days, President Obama tells the company, "We can't have this anymore. We are going to hire a private company to clean this up, and we are going to send you the bill, because we need this cleaned up NOW!"
The reaction from the White House would not be that surprising, because they had decided that things had to be cleaned up right away. Now, imagine the White House took the same approach with the BP spill in the Gulf. Let's say that President Obama said, "We have waited and waited for you to clean things up, but it is just taking too long. So we are going to ask Congress for a startup of 10 billion dollars with a renewable option in 10 billion dollar chunks until this mess is cleaned up, and then we are going to present you the bill. We will work to aid the work you are doing. You can continue to do what you have been doing, but we will add our workers to yours to clean things up more quickly."
Obama could use the proposal to both clean up the oil spill and help eliminate unemployment. If the oil spill needs massive cleanup, he could ask for massive funds and hire a massive amount of people to do it.
In this program, run by the government, the workers would of course have to use protective equipment. There would be none of that "don't wear those face masks because it looks bad" crap.
Oh, and if the Republicans fight it tooth and nail, Obama could simply say, "This proposal will clean up this mess, and it will enable coastal workers to go back to work after the mess is cleaned up. It will also employ many of the currently unemployed, so that instead of them getting unemployment benefits while not working, they will get paid instead for doing the important job of doing cleanup". And if the Republicans succeed in blocking it, then Obama has a great issue. He just says, "We tried to clean up the mess, get coastal workers back to work, and help a lot of unemployed get back to work. The Republicans didn't want that"
And if it does pass, when the cleanup is finished, we hand the bill to BP to pay for it. And if BP balks, we take over the Grand Horizon well and use the funds from the oil to pay the government back while we take them to court to make them pay.
Maybe the way President Obama is doing things now is best. I do not know. It just seems a shame to have so many people unemployed while cleaning up the oil is so desperately needed. It also seems a shame to have BP running the show and not caring about worker safety so that years from now the people helping with the cleanup may have to pay for that help with their heath. What do you think?