WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The U.S. Department of Interior announced today that it will move Texas into the South Pacific and replace it with the Hawaiian Islands in the newly-created Gulf of New Mexico.
Officials said the land-swap, among many other benefits, will immediately help revive the nation's moribund new housing market by instantly creating nearly 3,500 miles of accessible waterfront property in five states.
"Undoubtedly," said Interior Department spokesman Delbert McCracken, "this new configuration will create a more profitable -- and tasteful -- union."
The public-private venture, financed by U.S. Treasury-backed geographic redevelopment bonds, will be effective on Oct. 1, the first day of the 2013 fiscal year, McCracken said.
The agreement creates the 800-mile wide Gulf of New Mexico, framed by New Mexico's Trans-Pecos Coast to the west, Louisiana's Sabine Coast to the east, and Oklahoma's Panhandle Bay and Red River Coast to the north.
The move puts 26 million Texas on their own island -- 750-mile wide Lone Star Island, the world's fourth-largest -- in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where the island-state's agricultural, beef, mineral extraction, and tourism industries are expected to proposer in the warm, moist climate.
"Tell the Japanese we have thousands of golf courses waiting for them -- and Texas-sized steaks," joked Texas Gov. Rick Perry as he signed the Reconfiguration Act of 2013.
As expected, McCracken said, today's announcement spurred an immediate real-estate boom in newly-created seaside towns along 1,200 miles of newly-created Gulf of New Mexico coastline in four mainland states, and along the 2,200 new miles of coastline on Lone Star Island.
McCracken said a "first flush of initial institutional investment" was particularly significant in newly-established Industrial Development Areas on the mainland, each managed by public-private port authority agencies, in newly-created seaports such as the Port of Rio Grande near La Cruces, N.M.; the Port of Texarkansas, Ark.; the Port of Oil City, near Shreveport, La.; and Port of Sulphur City, near Lake Charles, La.
Land values were also escalating in new resort areas in emerging recreation meccas on the Gulf of New Mexico, including Hobbs Beach, N.M., and Texhoma, Okla., he said.
With the move, Texarkansas, Ark., is poised to be the region's administrative anchor and primary beneficiary by proximity to Honolulu, on Oahu Island, about 300 miles southwest, in the middle of the Gulf of New Mexico, according to McCracken.
The move was praised as a viable solution for a host of national issues, including reducing energy costs by removing Texas and making it easier to drill for oil in the Gulf of New Mexico.
Republican Presidential candidate Newt Gringrich immediately claimed credit for devising the Texas-Hawaii exchange as part of his "$2.50 a gallon" plan.
Anti-immigration activitists also applauded the land-swap. "Hell," said Nativist Now spokesman John Tanton, "a sea is even better than a wall. And we'll now know who the wetbacks are -- they'll be the one's with wet backs."
The Southern Baptist Convention gave the deal its resounding endorsement as "a call from the Lord" for Texas's 4.3 million Baptists to "extend the Buckle of the Bible Belt to half a world away, across the sea."
McCracken said all Americans will benefit one way or another from the swap.
"The reconfiguration will lower the cost of flying to Hawaii, making a tropical vacation more affordable for the average American family," he said. "It will dramatically lower the cost of pineapples and Mai Tais."
