Menendez takes Foreign Relations chairmanship

This article was updated with comment from U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-North Bergen) at 7:33 p.m.

A former Union City Mayor is now the country’s top congressional official on international affairs.

U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez took chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Thursday, more than a month after the swearings-in of new Democratic senators gave the party a majority in Congress’s upper chamber.

“I am deeply honored to be named Chairman and humbled to again lead of one of the Senate’s original ten standing committees; one that has shaped this nation’s foreign policy to advance the interests of all Americans in war and peace,” he said.

Menendez previously chaired the panel in 2013 and 2014, before Republicans took control of the Senate. He served as the committee’s ranking member in the intervening six years.

During his first tenure as chair, Menendez pushed a unanimously supported resolution allowing military action in Syria, where chemical weapons, including chlorine gas and the nerve agent sarin, were used, against targets that included civilian hubs.

A United Nations fact-finding mission later pegged blame for the attacks on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The country is still embroiled in civil war.

Menendez officially became the panel’s chair when the Foreign Relations Committee gaveled in Thursday morning, painting a grim picture of the work before him.

“In my 28 years in Congress working on foreign policy, I have never experienced a more consequential moment for our nation’s role in the world,” he said. “The sobering reality is that in this moment of crisis, the Trump administration left our national security architecture decimated and our diplomatic and development corps demoralized, ultimately weakening our standing on the global stage.”

He promised to seek bipartisan consensus on issues like the pandemic and China’s growing strength as a world power while pledging to repair America’s image as a world leader.

“At this critical time, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will work to restore our leadership around the world and advance our democratic values,” he said.

It’s not clear yet clear whether Menendez will ascend to chair a Senate subcommittee where he was ranking member.

Before Senate leaders from both parties reached an agreement on an organizing resolution handing control of the chamber to the Democratic majority Wednesday, Menendez was ranking member of the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community Development.

That panel has oversight over mass transit projects like the Gateway. New Jersey would likely benefit from having one of its own lawmakers in the post.

Complicating matters is a late-December rules change initiated by the Democratic caucus that allowed Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), then the minority whip, to hold the leadership post and the party’s top spot on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

A proposal passed as part of that rules change put senators with top committee assignments at the back of the line for subcommittee picks.

There was a vote slated for Thursday on subcommittee leadership, but it’s not clear that it’ll happen amid movement of budget resolutions enabling President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID relief plan.

The Senate’s trial on President Donald Trump’s second impeachment, due to start Monday, may also see subcommittee chairmanships put on the backburner.