The House voted to adopt a resolution denouncing socialism on Friday, the day New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, is meeting with President Trump at the White House.
The 285-98 vote split Democrats as the measure “opposes the implementation of socialist policies in the United States.”
All of the “no” votes came from Democrats, but 86 of them joined all Republicans backing the measure. Two Democrats voted present.
Rep. Maria Salazar, Florida Republican who led the resolution, said it was a “coincidence” that the vote fell on the day of the meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Mamdani. She commended the president for receiving the mayor-elect “because he won fair and square, and that’s the way democracy works.”
“If it would have been the other way around and Trump would have been the mayor-elect and Mamdani would have been the president of the United States, I assure you that there’s no way that Mamdani is going to receive Trump at the White House,” Ms. Salazar said.
“Because I know exactly how they operate. Democracy is just a tool to get power,” she said. “People who love freedom were just useful fools to be used in order to get to the business of power, which is all socialist, communist, whatever you want to call it.”
House Financial Services Chairman French Hill, Arkansas Republican, said it “should be a relatively straightforward, easy decision” to support the resolution.
Socialism “dulls the human capacity for self-initiative, entrepreneurship [and] risk taking,” he said.
Some Democrats agreed it’s not an ideology that elected officials should be promoting in the U.S.
“America is the land of opportunity, capitalism, American innovation and the American worker,” Rep. Josh Gottheimer, New Jersey Democrat, said. “We cannot let socialism tear it down.”
Mr. Gottheimer said socialists stand for raising taxes, job-killing policies like defunding the police, massive unfunded spending increases “and even government-run grocery stores.”
“Many of Mayor-elect Mamdani’s policies are at odds with the Democratic Party and American values,” he said. “Democrats are about common sense, problem-solving ideas that promote public safety, opportunities for all and lower costs for all Americans.”
Other Democrats argued against the measure and called it “a huge waste of time.”
“This resolution is an embarrassing distraction from the complete and total failure of the Trump administration to deliver actual results for the American people,” said California Rep. Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on the Financial Services Committee.
Ms. Waters said if Republicans truly cared about denouncing authoritarian socialism, they would call out the Trump administration for demanding companies such as Intel, U.S. Steel, MP Materials, Lithium Americas and Trilogy Metals hand over stock to the government.
“Why are my colleagues who are so quick to tout their capitalist leans silent when Trump follows Chinese communist tactics?” she said.
The resolution describes socialist ideology as promoting “a concentration of power that has, time and time again, collapsed into communist regimes, totalitarian rule and brutal dictatorships.”
It cites examples of “socialist ideologues” like Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Pol Pot, Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un, Daniel Ortega, Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro committing “many of the greatest crimes in history.”
“The United States was founded on the belief in the sanctity of the individual, to which the collectivistic system of socialism in all of its forms is fundamentally and necessarily opposed,” the resolution says.
Mr. Hill said it’s not just a messaging measure or a waste of time “to the people and the families who have experienced the horrors and atrocities associated with socialist regimes.”
