IMHO a couple of red herrings posited here.
The feds just needed to allow all the help offered to come in from the Dutch for example. And waive the exclusionary rules that prevented such help from doing cleanup.
We are already paying a fortune for bureaucrats to shovel paper by the the ton. That is the federal version of disaster mitigation.
Perhaps if all the written drivel that the feds have produced would be dumped into the GOM, they would soak up the spilled oil, then push the stuff in in a pile then light it off. Certainly would reduce amount of oil and a bunch of useless written drivel kept out of the landfill.
To have the feds stand on ceremony of 99.XX clean water to be dumped back into the GOM, after skimming, when a probable realistic amount is maybe 75 to 80. It is still removing vast quantities of floating crud.
Heck it's only been 70 plus days since the BP disaster. Seems any and all means would be undertaken ASAP to work on cleanup.
Here is a novel idea. Stop all foreign aid to everywhere and redirect the funds to cleanup.
Maybe even cut out the president's joyriding on AF1 to golf outings, that in itself could fund a lot of cleanup.