Richard Lugar Dies at 87; Led Arms-Control Pacts in Senate
4/28/19
Richard Lugar, a six-term Republican senator from Indiana whose foreign-affairs and farm-policy dealings with Democrats represented a bygone era of bipartisanship, has died. He was 87.
The Lugar Center, a Washington-based think tank founded by the senator, said Lugar died peacefully on Sunday. The cause of death was complications from CIDP (chronic inflammatory demylinating polyneuropathy), a rare neurological disorder.
Lugar led Senate confirmation of treaties with the Soviet Union limiting nuclear weapons during the 1980s. After the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991, he and Democratic Senator Sam Nunn led the legislative effort to demolish weapons of mass destruction in the successor states…..“Our nation and our world are safer because of this statesman,” President Barack Obama said in awarding Lugar the Medal of Freedom in 2013. “And in a time of unrelenting partisanship, Dick Lugar’s decency, his commitment to bipartisan problem-solving, stand as a model of what public service ought to be."
…Obama said Sunday in a statement that Lugar “proved that pragmatism and decency work — not only in Washington but all over the world.”
Lugar’s “decades-long work on nuclear nonproliferation, as well as his belief in robust foreign aid, made America and the world safer and stronger,” former President Bill Clinton said in a statement.
On domestic policy, Lugar was the rare senator from a farm state who opposed agricultural subsidies, and from a manufacturing state who was against trade tariffs. As chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee in 1996, he was father of the so-called Freedom to Farm law that eliminated many government subsidies and regulations dating from the 1930s.
Lugar-Obama Initiative:
Originally elected as a conservative, Lugar developed a reputation as a moderate Republican with no qualms about working with Democrats on legislation. In 2007, he and then-Senator Obama from neighboring Illinois cooperated on the Lugar-Obama proliferation and threat reduction initiative, aimed at preventing terrorists from getting weapons such as shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles.
Lugar lost his bid for a seventh Senate term in 2012 when a challenger with strong Tea Party support defeated him in the Republican primary election.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-28/richard-lugar-who-led-arms-control-pacts-in-senate-dies-at-87?srnd=premium