Editing Jesse Helms (section)

===Republican majority===
Republicans regained control of Congress after the 1994 elections and Helms finally became the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the first North Carolinian to chair the committee since [[Nathaniel Macon]]. In that role, Helms pushed for reform of the UN and blocked payment of the United States' dues. Helms secured sufficient reforms that a colleague, future [[President of the United States|President]] [[Joe Biden]] of [[Delaware]] said that "As only Nixon could go to China, only Helms could fix the U.N."<ref>Poster at Jesse Helms Center, [[Wingate, North Carolina]]</ref>

Helms passed few laws of his own in part because of this bridge-burning style. [[Hedrick Smith]]'s ''The Power Game'' portrays Helms as a "devastatingly effective power broker".<ref>{{cite news |first=Alan |last=Brinkley |author-link=Alan Brinkley |title=Where the Big Wheels Spin |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1988/03/27/books/where-the-big-wheels-spin.html |series=[[New York Times Book Review]] |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=March 27, 1988 |access-date=July 8, 2009}}</ref>

Helms tried to block the refunding of the Ryan White Care Act in 1995, saying that those with AIDS [[Victim blaming|were responsible for the disease]], because they had contracted it because of their "deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct", and that the reason AIDS existed in the first place was because it was "God's punishment for homosexuals".{{Citation needed|reason=Reliable source needed for quote that he believed AIDS was "God's punishment for homosexuals"|date=April 2020}} Helms also claimed that more federal dollars were spent on AIDS than heart disease or cancer, despite this not being borne out by the [[Public Health Service]] statistics.<ref>{{cite news |work=The New York Times |url= https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE4DA1230F936A35754C0A963958260 |title= Helms Puts the Brakes to a Bill Financing AIDS Treatment |date=July 5, 1995 |first=Katharine Q|last=Seelye}}</ref>