Fact Check: Do 70 Members of Congress Belong to Socialist Party of America Caucus?
This morning, the website Blue Collar Republican has planted the Soviet symbol of the hammer and the sickle next to a claim that Rep. Steve Cohen is one of the “Congressmen who are members of the American Socialist Party”. The cited source for this claim is Gateway Pundit at the fundamentalist Christian website First Things, who declares:
The Socialist Party of America announced in their October 2009 newsletter that 70 Congressional democrats currently belong to their caucus.
Let’s fact check this claim.
1. A check with the official list of registered congressional caucuses shows that there is no congressional caucus in either 2009 or 2010 containing the word “socialist,” “socialism,” or any other variation on the word “social.” The supposed Socialist Party of America Caucus does not exist.
2. The “Socialist Party of America” has not been in existence for 38 years.
3. The list of the supposed 70 members of the non-existent Socialist Party of America’s non-existent caucus is an outdated copy of the membership of the Congressional Progressive Caucus as it stood in fall of 2009.
Conclusion: the claim that “The Socialist Party of America announced in their October 2009 newsletter that 70 Congressional democrats currently belong to their caucus” is untrue on multiple counts.
To the extent that websites propagating this claim are aware of these facts, they are participants in a hoax.
