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Foreign Relations Committee, Senate
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee oversees most aspects of the relations of the United States with other countries. Historically, it has been one of the most important forums for congressional influence in the field of international affairs.
Like its House counterpart, the International Relations Committee, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has jurisdiction over foreign aid and legislation concerning the operations of the State Department, which carries out most U.S. foreign policies. Unlike the House committee, Foreign Relations also has the right to recommend Senate approval or rejection of foreign policy nominations and treaties submitted by the president. (See Treaty-making Power.)
Since the early nineteenth century the Foreign Relations Committee has been one of the most prestigious and powerful committees on Capitol Hill. Its members played important roles in crucial foreign policy debates. In the decades following World War II, for example, the committee helped guide U.S. policy through the cold war of the late 1940s and 1950s, the Vietnam War in the 1960s, and the Panama Canal treaties in the 1970s. The committee was widely admired as the source of a bipartisan foreign policy consensus that for many years guided U.S. actions.
By the 1980s, however, the committee had lost much of its power and influence. For a variety of reasons, the committee no longer occupied the vital role in decision making for foreign policy that it had in previous decades. But beginning in the mid-1990s the committee's chairs made a determined effort to have their voices heard once again in important policy debates.
Loss of Influence
One factor weakening the Foreign Relations Committee was the general decline in the foreign policy authority of Congress. As power shifted from Congress to the executive branch, the Foreign Relations Committee lost its role in many key international issues.
The unpopularity of foreign aid programs also handicapped the committee. One of the committee's most important duties is to write a bill authorizing economic and military aid to other countries. The bill, which sets overall policy guidelines and spending limits for foreign aid programs, was once an important means for Congress to influence U.S. foreign policy. But in recent years the bills approved by the committee have rarely won approval from the Senate or Congress as a whole. From 1980 to 2003 only two authorization bills for foreign aid cleared Congress, although some provisions of foreign aid authorization bills became law separately.
The Foreign Relations Committee's loss was the Appropriations Committee's gain, as the traditional annual or biennial authorization bills for foreign aid were supplanted by provisions in appropriations bills. The committee also lost power to other congressional committees, such as the Armed Services Committee, which gained influence over arms control matters.
The political makeup of the Foreign Relations Committee also changed significantly. In its glory days, the committee was dominated by a coalition of moderate Democrats and Republicans, who usually were able to work out a common position on critical issues. But by the late 1980s the committee had become deeply divided between mostly liberal Democrats and a group of very conservative Republicans. Debates on important issues, such as war in Central America and nuclear arms control, were marked by bitter arguments between the two factions.
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