Sink the Law of the Sea Again

The United Nations treaty called Law of the Sea was negotiated by the State Department, and then presented to Ronald Reagan for signing as soon as he became President in 1981. Reagan immediately recognized it as a bad treaty that would restrict U.S. sovereignty and require us to pay an international body half of all our royalties from offshore drilling. UN bureaucrats would then distribute the money as they wanted, because the U.S. would have only one vote out of 160.

Reagan rejected the Law of the Sea Treaty, and we thought that took care of the problem. The American people and the U.S. Senate have refused to ratify it. But like a bad penny, this obnoxious UN treaty keeps coming back again and again. Now the Obama Administration is making its effort to get our Senate to ratify it.

Let me tell you a few of the really objectionable provisions of this UN Law of the Sea Treaty. It creates an International Seabed Authority and gives it unprecedented powers to regulate seven-tenths of the world's surface; and the power to levy international taxes; and the power to impose production quotas on deep-sea mining and oil production; and the power to regulate ocean research and exploration; and the power to create a multinational court system to make judgments about who owns what, and enforce those judgments. And that's not all. The Law of the Sea Treaty also imposes mandatory information-sharing so that our enemies will get all our confidential military information. And the Treaty requires obligatory technology transfers that would equip actual or potential enemies with sensitive information about all our submarine and anti-submarine technology.

Tell your U.S. Senators to vote No any time the Senate brings up the Law of the Sea Treaty.Listen to the radio commentary here: