Eliot Engel, a 16-term Democratic congressman from the Bronx who rose to chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee but whose political fortunes were undone in 2020 when a live microphone caught him making an ill-advised comment in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, died on Friday in a hospital in the Bronx. He was 79.

His family confirmed the death, and said the cause was Parkinson’s disease.

As an insurgent former New York State assemblyman, Mr. Engel was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1988 after toppling Representative Mario Biaggi, a 10-term incumbent and a fixture of New York politics, in the Democratic primary. Mr. Biaggi had resigned his seat after being charged in a corruption scandal, but his name had remained on the ballot because nominating petitions had already been filed.

Once he took office, Mr. Engel championed liberal causes, supporting the Affordable Care Act while endorsing an even broader single-payer health care system; backing legislation to improve maternity care and combat tuberculosis; and seeking to reduce the nation’s dependence on imported oil.

Mr. Engel pressured the Clinton administration to protect Kosovar Albanians during the conflict in the Balkans, and in 2008 called for the United States to recognize Kosovo when it declared its independence from Serbia. He was also known for helping negotiate the Harkin-Engel Protocol, which sought to combat child labor abuses worldwide.

After Democrats took control of the House in the 2018 midterm elections, Mr. Engel was elevated to the chairmanship of the Foreign Affairs Committee. He had been the committee’s ranking minority member since 2013 and a fervent supporter of Israel, embracing Jerusalem as its undivided capital.