Senate Committee on Foreign Relations

Richard Lugar addressing a meeting of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Lugar was Chair of the committee from 1985 to 1987 and again from 2003 to 2007.

Portrait of Richard G. Lugar as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 1986.

Much of Senator Lugar’s career was spent on two committees: the Agriculture Committee and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (also known as the Foreign Relations Committee). He spent 34 years on the Foreign Relations Committee, joining in 1979 and remaining until his retirement in 2013. According to Dan Diller, only two people in the history of the Senate have served on the committee for 34 years: Senator Lugar and Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware.