Believe it or not, I lean towards Yes, we should assume direct control.
Like it or not, better or worse, they are a territory of ours. We can’t cut them loose and say “Adios”.
The problem lies in asking Congress to take over the affairs of the territory. Congress right now seems incapable of taking care of the affairs of the current 50 states. I can’t picture them doing the right thing fiscally for Puerto Rico.
The only alternative (and I don’t know if it’s feasible) is to assume direct control for a very specific period (example 5 years) do our utmost to get the islands fiscal affairs in order and then offer them two choices: statehood or independence. Continued territorial status is no longer an option.
Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t want PR to be our 51st state. I’d prefer they went away - far away. But if they choose statehood, we need to treat their petition like any other territory that applied for statehood.
You had one of the best comments here.
Could we get three or four US states to adopt portions of PR into their state territories?
(But which states would actually want to do it?)
If you are interested, an interesting comparison would be the period when Washington, DC was taken over by a Control Board for a number of years until fiscally responsible. Alice Rivlin a well known economist was on that board. There are a number of articles at this Google listing.