Additionally we can include all of the Pacific Islands that the USA formerly governed or claimed:
Palau, Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Tokelau, Samoa, Phoenix Islands, Line Islands
Yes! But the really
wild proposals, unfortunately, don't mean the criteria.
I refer, for instance, to Theodore Roosevelt's plan to
annex the whole damn Congo. Roosevelt despised Leopold II. In January 1904, when Leopold's depradations in the Free State were very much on the public mind, and editorials advocating action against his regime there were posted in the news-papers roughly every week, a motion passed the Senate that gave support to "
any action taken by the President" on the matter of the atrocities in the Congo. A month later, a motion "
encouraging the President to
intercede" was passed in the Senate. But no real action was taken. Only in 1908 did Roosevelt first suggest (in private) that it would be good if the Congo could outright be
taken from Leopold. By that time, he was planning his African expedition. At the end of the year, a detailed editorial was published, proposing that the USA purchase the Congo (with international pressure forcing Leopold to acquiesce), whereupon outgoing President Roosevelt would become its governor (with broad acting powers). Roosevelt evidently liked the idea, and while in Africa, considered that notion and believed it to be a very good idea. Of course, by then, he wasn't President anymore, and Belgium had already taken over Leopold's former "Free State" as a regularised colony.
Another such wild, but awesome-in-an-AH-way, suggestion was the idea that the USA should buy the Russian Far East and large parts of Siberia, which was suggested by several people (some of them quite prominent) in the very early '90s. Yeltsin, who was on "sell everything" spree, was rumoured to be open to the idea if the price was right (it would solve his acute problems very comprehensively), but there was no way to get the Russian public to back it. Most plans were based on buying the thinly-populated parts of Asian Russia, and turning the vast purchased region into corporate concessions. Stuff like this is
great for cyberpunk-ish AH scenarios.