Senate Must Refuse To Subsidize this Un-Ratified, Dangerous International Proposal

As President Bush counts down his final year in office, Americans naturally wonder whether he'll use his remaining time to advance conservative principles despite a hostile Congress, or instead seek to create a "legacy" in the minds of the literati. 

In his fiscal year 2009 budget proposal, he unfortunately nods toward the latter. 

In that budget proposal, President Bush solicits some $5 million of American taxpayers' hard-earned dollars on behalf of the infamous United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, more commonly known as the "Law of the Sea Treaty," or "LOST."  Indeed, few words could better characterize this pernicious accord better than "lost." 

For those unfamiliar, LOST is the proposed international agreement, rejected by President Reagan, that seeks to create an international legal tribunal governing the oceans and their resources.  Just what America needs - another unaccountable multinational court to undermine its interests and further erode its sovereignty.  Like the United Nations itself, such a tribunal would constitute a forum in which anti-American and anti-Semitic tyrants and kleptocrats could sue the United States and place the world's unclaimed oceanic resources under its authority. 

From 1973 through 1982, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea drafted this proposed agreement, seeking to allocate nations' ability to navigate the seas and access their plentiful natural resources, and to create an international bureaucracy to enforce its provisions.  Naturally, these negotiations were dominated by the usual band of Third World malefactors, meaning that their aims were diametrically opposed to America's well-being.

Indeed, the fact that this proposed treaty emerged from a United Nations conference itself provides sufficient basis for Americans to reject it, but its provisions are even more alarming than one might immediately assume.  Besides rendering the United States subject to yet another international bureaucratic tribunal, LOST prevents or impedes critical mineral exploration at precisely a time of natural commodities shortages and price inflation.  Across the world, such necessary minerals as copper, zinc and lead are in increasingly short supply, to mention nothing of crude oil and natural gas.  As a consequence, price inflation for these resources is skyrocketing across international commodities markets.  Ultimately, we consumers pay the price. 

One of the best ways to alleviate these commodities shortages and relieve their consequent price pressures is to explore the oceans' vast reservoirs of these indispensable resources.  The offshore oil beds alone would greatly reduce America's dependence upon foreign sources.  But under LOST, such access would be curtailed or eliminated. 

Fortunately, President Reagan recognized these fatal flaws and rejected the treaty in January 1982.  Although Presidents George H. W. Bush and Clinton attempted to resuscitate the agreement during their terms, they failed to resolve the concerns that led President Reagan to reject it.  Nevertheless, President Clinton submitted the treaty to the Senate for ratification in 1994. 

Since that time, however, the Senate has wisely never even brought the treaty to the floor for debate.  As a result, LOST is not a treaty to which the United States is a party, and its dangerous provisions are inapplicable to American policy. 

Accordingly, the Bush Administration's effort to endow this atrocious treaty with American dollars is perplexing and alarming.  Because the United States is not a member of this agreement, it is under no obligation whatsoever to fund it or submit to its destructive terms.  By choosing to finance it, however, President Bush sends a signal that America should somehow accept its obligations and ratify it formally. 

In response, the Senate should rightfully resist the Bush Administration's not-so-clever attempt to circumvent its Constitutional advice and consent responsibilities, and refuse to provide the requested funds.  As our domestic economy shows signs of softening and we run a budget deficit, this is simply not the time for American taxpayers' dollars to subsidize this unratified, noxious treaty.