GLENN BECK PROGRAM
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

GLENN: I'm glad to have you on. You are one of the guys, one of the few that are really taking up the fight against the loss treaty and this is, this is something that kept Ronald Reagan up at night. He said this was -- correct me if I'm wrong. He said this was the beginning and the end of our sovereignty if this thing ever was signed.

SENATOR INHOFE: Yeah, and they keep claiming that since 1982 that they've corrected all the problems they had. And I went back and looked at them and they didn't correct any of them. Let me remind our listeners that it was 2004 that the Senate formulations committee came out and unanimously passed this thing for ratification. It was going to be ratified the next day and we saw what it was and at that time Republicans were -- that was back when we were important, when we were the majority party.

GLENN: Yeah.

Senator James M Inhofe of Oklahoma

SENATOR INHOFE: And so I demanded a couple of hearings. We had one before the armed services committee and one before the environment public works committee. I had Gene Kirkpatrick and everybody coming in and we just drove them crazy, but let's keep in mind there's one common thing. Most of the bad things that happen to America come from the United Nations. In this case straight from the United Nations, an attempt to take over, away our sovereignty over 70% of the Earth's surface. And there are a couple of things that people have to understand and that is every time the United Nations does something that's really bad, the only leverage we have in this country is to pass a resolution, which we've done several times in the United States Senate, saying that if you don't stop this, we're going to withhold so much of your -- the dues and so forth. Well, this whole idea, the Law of the Sea Treaty would set up a governing body, the International Seabed Authority that would give them the power to levy a global tax and we would lose any accountability. And this has been my main concern about this thing. Then, of course, there are a lot of national defense aspects of it, too. But it was on its way to be ratified back in March of 2004.

GLENN: So this -- how do you mean they can levy a global tax?

SENATOR INHOFE: Well, they have the authority. You read the treaty and it says that this International Seabed Authority has tax-setting privileges. They can do it. They can -- it specifically says they can levy a tax. Now, they claim that this is necessary for disciplining in other areas, but the bottom line is that if they ever are able to levy a tax -- let's say on international airline flights. They have been trying to do that for a long time so that they would no longer have to be accountable to any country and so that's one of the major problems that you have there. But then it lists only four circumstances in which we could stop a ship on high seas and they are human trafficking, drug trafficking, piracy and unauthorized broadcasting. And I would ask you, Glenn, what would you do if we had knowledge that there are terrorists in a ship or say a weapon of mass destruction or something like that. We would not be able to stop them because it's not one of the four criteria that's necessary for us to be able to intervene. So it's just, it's just one more chip away at our sovereignty. I think that's what Ronald Reagan said at that time. And I wish Ronald Reagan could be here today to see this mentality that surrounds United States Senate that if it's not multinational, it's something that we don't want anything to do with.

GLENN: I tell you, Senator, you know, just what was happening with the brutal murderer from Texas with the Vienna treaty and the way that is going to the Supreme Court where we can have the international court tell us what to do with prisoners should have been a real eye-opener for America but I don't think -- you don't see it anywhere on television. When you talk about the international Sea Treaty, you are not hearing this anywhere. This is getting no coverage.

SENATOR INHOFE: Well, you don't and, you know, I have to criticize the administration. You know, I'm ranked as the most conservative Republican in the entire United States Senate.

GLENN: God bless you.

SENATOR INHOFE: But I'm upset with the President in this case. He had people testifying before our committee, and I asked one of them. He's one of the undersecretaries. This is before the Senate armed services committee in '04. I said, now, as I read this, it's not just 70% of the Earth's surface but it's the air above it. Can you tell me that it's not? And he thought for a minute and he said, no, I can't say that. Maybe it is. Well, that's what they threw at us and so you stop and think about what we are giving up there and it's a scary thing.

GLENN: Now, this is --

SENATOR INHOFE: And the administration is pushing it.

GLENN: This would stop us also from any kind of mining rights or going to get oil? Would it stop us from --

SENATOR INHOFE: We would have to go to the authority. We would no longer be able to do that. There would be a central authority that we would have to go to. That would be for deep sea mining or for exploration, oil exploration. And for some reason some of the mining companies are supporting this, and I have not heard. I have asked but I've not received an answer. I think it's more they are just being intimidated.

GLENN: And one of the reasons why I hear this has support in the Senate now is because there are some senators that believe that this is going to open up the Arctic region for us, or the polar cap so we will be able to get more oil out of the polar cap. Is there anything to that?

SENATOR INHOFE: No, I don't think there's anything to that but there is something very close to that and that is getting into the global warming thing. All these people, these historical people out there are thinking that this would allow them a level of regulation in terms of what they can -- could be regulated, CO2, methane and other anthropogenic gases and a backdoor way of trying to get into global warming.

GLENN: In what way? How would this open up back door global warming?

SENATOR INHOFE: Well, it gets into the, they have the jurisdiction for something. Let's say, for example, that you wanted to go into a mining operation or you wanted to explore some place. You would have to go to this authority. They can say, well, in order to do that you are going to have to give us an environmental impact statement as to how much CO2's going to be released into the atmosphere and establish their own criteria. So we don't know what they're going to do. It's kind of like in here they say that it exempts military activities but it does not define what military activities are. It says they have to be defined at the time by the judges of the International Seabed Authority. So again they are in the driver seat, and I think they would be in a good position to make those determinations.

END TRANSCRIPT