Don’t fund the Law of the Sea Treaty

Don’t fund the Law of the Sea Treaty
President Bush’s proposed 2009 budget includes a worrisome item: funding for the Law of the Sea Treaty.



Not only is this fiscally irresponsible—the Senate has yet to ratify the treaty, so taxpayers have no obligation to support it—but it bolsters an agreement that threatens American interests, Heritage expert Nile Gardiner explains.

“U.S. taxpayer dollars should not be used to fund non-existent obligations stemming from flawed treaties,” he argues. “LOST should not be ratified, much less funded prior to ratification.”

Gardiner, who directs Heritage’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, enumerates the serious flaws in the treaty:

LOST, among other things, creates yet another unaccountable and opaque international organization, sets a precedent for international taxation of U.S. companies, provides an avenue for international environmental regulation, and threatens U.S. sovereignty by subjecting the United States and U.S. companies to mandatory dispute resolution in international fora that have traditionally been stacked against U.S. interests.

Funding LOST would set a bad precedent and could pave the way for throwing money at all sorts of international boondoggles, Gardiner warns.

“The Administration has no business making a budget request directed at subsidizing organizations of which the United States is not a member,” he continues. “The United States is already obligated to supply billions of dollars in funding to dysfunctional and mismanaged international organizations such as the Untied Nations, the U.N. Development Program, and U.N. Peacekeeping Operations.”