The United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations is a standing committee of the United States Senate. It is charged with leading foreign-policy legislation and debate in the Senate. The Foreign Relations Committee is generally responsible for overseeing (but not administering) and funding foreign aid programs as well as funding, arms sales and training for national allies. The committee is also responsible for holding confirmation hearings for high-level positions in the Department of State. The committee has considered, debated, and reported important treaties and legislation, ranging from the purchase of Alaska in 1867 to the establishment of the United Nations in 1945. It also holds jurisdiction over all diplomatic nominations. Along with the Finance and Judiciary Committees, the Foreign Relations Committee is one of the oldest in the Senate, going back to the initial creation of committees in 1816. Its sister committee in the House of Representatives is the Committee on Foreign Affairs (renamed from International Relations by the 110th Congress in January 2007).
Read more about United States Senate Committee On Foreign Relations: Members, 112th Congress, Subcommittees, Chairmen (1816-present)
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“America—rather, the United States—seems to me to be the Jew among the nations. It is resourceful, adaptable, maligned, envied, feared, imposed upon. It is warm-hearted, overfriendly; quick-witted, lavish, colorful; given to extravagant speech and gestures; its people are travelers and wanderers by nature, moving, shifting, restless; swarming in Fords, in ocean liners; craving entertainment; volatile. The schnuckle among the nations of the world.”
—Edna Ferber (1887–1968)
“It is said that the British Empire is very large and respectable, and that the United States are a first-rate power. We do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind every man which can float the British Empire like a chip, if he should ever harbor it in his mind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Sean Thornton: I don’t get this. Why do we have to have you along. Back in the states I’d drive up, honk the horn, a gal’d come runnin’ out.
Mary Kate Danaher: Come a runnin’. I’m no woman to be honked at and come a runnin’.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)
“Like Cato, give his little Senate laws,
And sit attentive to his own applause.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
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—George F. Will (b. 1941)
“A régime which invented a biological foreign policy was obviously acting against its own best interests. But at least it obeyed its own particular logic.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“I know all those people. I have friendly, social, and criminal relations with the whole lot of them.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)