[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 148 (Tuesday, October 22, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H6668-H6670]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       HONORING GERARD L. LaROCHE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Radel). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Franks) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, the United States loses several 
hundred of our greatest, those heroes of the Greatest Generation, every 
day. I speak of the World War II veterans whose valor, courage, and 
sacrifice stopped the evil shadow of the swastika from falling across 
the whole of humanity.
  One of those heroes we lost recently was Gerard L. LaRoche, a World 
War II veteran of D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge, Mr. Speaker. He 
was a Harvard-trained linguist who continued to serve his country after 
the war at the National Security Agency for many years.
  Gerard went home to be with his savior on October 6. He was 93 years 
old.
  Gerard was a Renaissance man. He was a translator, a language 
teacher, and a professor at several universities and colleges, a choral 
director, and a calligrapher. He was also a talented draftsman, Mr. 
Speaker, a violinist, a photographer, a recording engineer, and a 
furniture maker.
  Gerard was born of French-Canadian parents in Cambridge, 
Massachusetts, in 1920, the oldest of eight children and the son of a 
noted calligrapher and schoolteacher who encouraged his artistic 
talents.
  Mr. Speaker, in 1933, at age 13, Gerard entered the seminary of the 
Marist Order but left at 21 to study at Boston College, where he 
received his bachelor's degree and his master's.

                              {time}  2045

  He specialized in the study of romance languages, and then the 
outbreak of World War II came and interrupted his studies. He enlisted 
in the Army and served with the 2nd Armored Division, where he was at 
Normandy on D-Day Plus Six, and at the Battle of the Bulge. His ability 
to speak many forms of French soon landed him as an aide to help U.S. 
military brass communicate with the Belgians and the French. Through 
all this, he found time to make sketches of the villages, cities, and 
countryside in England and in Europe. He eventually continued his 
studies until he received his masters from Harvard in romance 
philology.
  While stationed in the southwest of England, he met his future wife, 
his beloved Joyce Latchem, at a village dance just weeks before D-Day. 
They were married on October 18, 1947.
  And now, Mr. Speaker, for a time at least, Gerard has left behind his 
best friend and loyal wife, Joyce; his daughter, Marianne; two sons, 
Jerome and David; six grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. But 
they shall all meet again and gather together some day.
  Mr. Speaker, Gerard LaRoche was a godly man, a devoted patriot and 
willing soldier, a committed husband, father, and friend. This national 
treasure will be missed, and we, his fellow Americans, are forever 
grateful to this noble champion of human freedom.
  God bless Gerard.


                      ObamaCare Origination Clause

  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Now, Mr. Speaker, I am going to change 
subjects and talk about sometimes it is the water on the inside of a 
ship that sinks it rather than the water on the outside. Mr. Speaker, 
right now we have water on the inside of our ship because sometimes the 
Constitution itself is being ignored by this administration.
  Mr. Speaker, in 2012, the Supreme Court narrowly and specifically 
upheld the individual mandate at the heart of ObamaCare under 
Congress's general taxing power. The Court noted specifically:

       Even if the taxing power enables Congress to impose a tax 
     on not obtaining health insurance, any tax must still comply 
     with other requirements in the Constitution.

  In short, Mr. Speaker, ObamaCare was upheld as a tax. The Supreme 
Court did not and has not yet considered a challenge to the Affordable 
Care Act's taxing provisions on the grounds that it violated the 
origination clause in the United States Constitution, and it most 
certainly did exactly that.

[[Page H6669]]

  Mr. Speaker, the origination clause is found in article I, section 7, 
of the Constitution and states:

       All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House 
     of Representatives.

  In creating ObamaCare, Senator Harry Reid took an entirely unrelated 
bill, H.R. 3590 containing just 714 words that did not raise taxes, and 
then stripped it of everything but its bill number. He then put the 
400,000-word ObamaCare that raised taxes in 17 different places in this 
empty-shell bill. Through this bit of legislative trickery, Mr. Reid 
claims that ObamaCare originated in the House, when in fact every last 
provision of ObamaCare, including the largest tax increase in American 
history, all came from the Senate.
  Mr. Speaker, this sort of procedure absolutely ignores and vacates 
the Founders' intent, and it renders the origination clause of our 
Constitution completely meaningless. If it is allowed to stand, the 
origination clause in the Constitution is a dead letter.
  Mr. Speaker, this is not a small or marginal issue. The principle 
behind the origination clause was the moral justification for our 
entire War of Independence. Its importance was expressed through the 
Virginia House of Burgesses, the Stamp Act of Congress, and the First 
Continental Congress, all of which petitioned the Crown and Parliament 
in England for redress of their tax grievances. It was with these 
realities in mind that the origination clause of our Constitution was 
written; and without it at the core of the Great Compromise of 1787, 
the 13 original States would never have agreed to ratify the 
Constitution.
  When our Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, they knew it was 
vital for the power to raise and levy taxes to originate in the 
people's House, whose Members are closest to the electorate with 2-year 
terms, rather than the Senate, whose Members sit unchallenged for 6-
year terms and do not proportionally represent the American population, 
and already enjoy their own unique and separate Senate powers 
intentionally divided by the Framers between the two Chambers.
  If we as Members of Congress, who took a solemn oath to defend and 
protect the Constitution, including its origination clause, fail to 
assert this right and responsibility as the immediate representatives 
of the people and those most accountable to them, we dishonor the 
Founders' memory and fundamentally abrogate our sworn oath to uphold 
and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, 
foreign and domestic.
  Mr. Speaker, this fall, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of 
Columbia Circuit will hear an appeal in the case Sissel v. HHS as to 
whether ObamaCare violates the origination clause of the Constitution. 
I urge my colleagues to sign on to H. Res. 153 and to join me in an 
amicus brief that I will be filing with the court, along with 31 other 
Members of Congress currently, and this brief expresses our collective 
conviction that the passage of ObamaCare was and is unconstitutional.
  Mr. Speaker, ObamaCare was the largest tax increase in American 
history. The United States Supreme Court specifically and officially 
ruled it a tax. Consequently, under Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, the 
House and the Senate in passing it in the manner they did categorically 
violated the origination clause without which the U.S. Constitution 
never would have been born in the first place.
  It is now the duty of the judiciary to strike down ObamaCare as a 
clear violation of the origination clause. The failure to do so is an 
abrogation of their judicial oath to the Constitution and undermines 
their relevance as an institution.
  It would also allow the Obama administration to blow yet another huge 
hole in the constitutional fabric of this noble Republic.

  Mr. Speaker, Daniel Webster said it this way:

       Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and the Republic 
     for which it stands, for miracles do not cluster, and what 
     has happened once in 6,000 years may never happen again. So 
     hold on to the Constitution for if the American Constitution 
     should fall, there will be anarchy throughout the world.

  Mr. Speaker, I hope that the court will take those words seriously; 
and I hope when they hear ObamaCare, they will do the right thing: they 
will simply read the origination clause and understand that if they let 
the President blow through this, if we walk away from this, we simply 
undermine our credibility and our oath and we render a critical part of 
the Constitution that was vital to this Republic ever coming into 
existence, we render that part of the Constitution, as I said earlier, 
a dead letter.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, I guess it all comes down to making sure we 
understand as a people that the Constitution was put here to protect 
three basic rights: the right to live; the right to be free; and the 
right to own property. And, hopefully, that will allow us to pursue our 
dreams in the best way we know how; but none of those things can occur 
if our national security is significantly undermined or threatened; 
and, Mr. Speaker, I believe that it is today so let me shift gears one 
more time.


                 Security Threat of Nuclear Armed Iran

  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, the greatest security threat in 
the world today is that of a nuclear-armed Iran. And now, Iran is once 
again the news of the moment. As talks have begun between the United 
States and Iran, American leaders given the charge to protect America's 
national security must not be charmed by wolves in sheep's clothing.
  When innocent civilians in Syria were mercilessly attacked by 
chemical weapons, the Obama administration was caught on its heels in a 
foreign policy quandary. America was reminded again that the United 
States must always be vigilant and embrace an international relations 
framework which enables proactive engagement rather than merely 
reactionary, crisis response.
  I desperately hope these discussions will proceed in the context of 
the grave reality the human family will face if nuclear weapons fall 
into the hands of jihadists in Iran.
  Mr. Speaker, to use the slightly altered words of our Secretary of 
State: in a world of terrorists and extremists, we ignore these risks 
at our peril. We simply cannot afford to have nuclear weapons become 
the IED or car bomb of tomorrow. Neither our country, nor our 
conscience can bear the cost of inaction. An action that will reinforce 
the prohibition against illegal nuclear weapons is an authorization of 
military force in Iran. We are talking about actions that will degrade 
Iran's capacity to use these weapons and ensure that they do not 
proliferate. With this authorization, the President will simply have 
the power to make sure the United States of America means what we say.
  Now, I can't say actually unquote, Mr. Speaker, because those words 
were changed just slightly. Actually, these are indeed the essential 
words of Secretary Kerry's recent justification for attacking Bashar al 
Assad's regime. However, when he said ``Syria,'' I inserted ``Iran.'' 
And whenever he said ``chemical weapons,'' I inserted ``nuclear 
weapons.'' Mr. Speaker, if this is a line of reasoning the 
administration chooses to stand behind, then we simply cannot refute 
the parallel argument related to a nuclear Iran, which poses an 
exponential greater national security threat to the United States than 
chemical weapons in Syria.
  Secretary Kerry asserted Mr. Obama ``means what he says.'' But, Mr. 
Speaker, if the world truly believed that this President means what he 
says, the chemical weapons crisis in Syria would never have occurred in 
the first place. Secretary Kerry said of the crisis in Syria that North 
Korea and Iran were closely watching our actions. Well, I don't 
disagree with him, Mr. Speaker, but the converse is actually far more 
true: Syria has been closely watching Mr. Obama's inaction toward North 
Korea and Iran since he became President. And, consequently, Assad felt 
he could use chemical weapons on innocent men, women, and children with 
impunity. The entire world now sees the U.S. under this President as 
all talk.
  Mr. Speaker, our critical diplomatic policies must be backed by our 
unmovable will to back them up by all means necessary.
  The popular concession this week is to embrace Iranian openness and 
regard their willingness to negotiate. But, Mr. Speaker, we know IAEA 
declarations have gone unanswered by this regime and diplomatic 
efforts, including 10 rounds of negotiations since 2011,

[[Page H6670]]

and they have borne no fruit. Decades have passed without a single 
concession coming from the world's leading sponsor of terror. In 2005, 
we saw North Korea, another rogue nation, petition for talks without 
ending their nuclear weapons program, and demanding U.S. concessions. 
How did they hold up their end of the bargain, Mr. Speaker? They have 
conducted three flagrant nuclear weapons tests. This, in spite of the 
fact that North Korea has been sanctioned virtually into starvation for 
nearly half a century.
  Iran is closer than ever and racing toward a full nuclear weapons 
capability. The Iranian Government's intentions, actions, and capacity 
to develop nuclear weapons capability and sponsor international 
terrorism are terrifyingly clear. The time to regain our credibility 
with both our allies and foes alike in this region is now, before the 
situation devolves into a Syria-like situation, where we are 
frantically searching for solutions after the crisis has already begun.
  To that end, I have introduced the U.S.-Iran Nuclear Negotiations 
Act. This act will strengthen the United States negotiating position in 
the upcoming talks with Iran. It will also outline congressional 
priorities in any nuclear negotiations with Iran. A bad deal with Iran 
which does not definitively prevent a nuclear weapons capable Iran is 
worse than no deal at all.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, I will just say this about a nuclear Iran. I 
understand that there are great challenges; but whatever the cost, 
whatever the cost to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran may be, it will pale 
in insignificance compared to the cost to our children and the entire 
human family of allowing the jihadist regime in Iran to gain nuclear 
weapons.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________