ANNALS OF FUNDRAISING: Johnson “has quietly assembled a group of wealthy Louisiana political backers who could become key players in GOP fundraising under Johnson’s speakership,” CNBC’s Brian Schwartz reports. — “With Johnson under pressure to raise millions of dollars for the 2024 House races, his circle of Louisiana’s top Republican donors could be asked to step up. One of them is shipyard magnate Donald ‘Boysie’ Bollinger, a longtime supporter of Johnson and to the Republican party.” — “Bollinger is widely viewed as one of the most influential Republican political donors in Louisiana,” and has served as a state finance chair for each of the last five GOP presidential nominees. — “Johnson’s campaign reported a donation of $6,600 from Bollinger in February, according to Federal Election Commission records. Bollinger gave the campaign $4,800 in 2022, according to the records,” while another major GOP donor in the state, real estate executive Joseph Canizaro, has also given to Johnson’s campaigns. — Louisiana’s oil and gas industry has powered Johnson’s fundraising in the past as well, with oil and gas workers giving over $330,000 to Johnson’s campaigns, according to OpenSecrets. PLAYING THE CHINA CARD: The coalition of retailers spearheading the fight on the Hill to inject more competition into credit card processing is trying out a new argument for the Credit Card Competition Act in hopes of wooing China hawks. The Merchants Payments Coalition is seizing on concerns raised by Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee last week about China’s efforts to secure a foothold in the global payments market. — Senate Banking ranking member Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and 10 other GOP members of the panel asked Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo on Oct. 25 to “closely examine the infiltration of Chinese payments networks into the U.S.,” including whether any of those networks, like China’s increasingly popular UnionPay, could be putting Americans’ personal information at risk. — In a letter to Scott and Senate Banking Chair Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) this morning, the Merchants Payments Coalition sought to link Visa and Mastercard with the company, noting they allowed UnionPay to join the security standards group EMVCo a decade ago. — “Today, there is no law preventing Visa, Mastercard or any of the banks for which Visa and Mastercard set credit card prices and rules from working with China UnionPay,” the coalition wrote. “There is, however, one piece of legislation that would create a legal restriction prohibiting China UnionPay from being enabled on any U.S. credit card — the Credit Card Competition Act.” — The bill, which would chiefly require card-issuing financial institutions to at least one credit card network in addition to Visa or Mastercard, also directs the Federal Reserve to compile a list of card networks that could not be added in addition to Visa or Mastercard because of national security reasons or because they are owned or operated by a foreign government. — “Not only would the legislation bar China UnionPay, it would bar Russia’s card network Mir or other networks that pose a threat to U.S. payments,” the coalition wrote. UNDER THE HOOD: The conservative groups behind yesterday’s letter asking Congress to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act’s drug pricing provisions received more than $1 million from the pharmaceutical industry’s top trade group in the most recent year for which tax filings are available, according to liberal watchdog group Accountable.US. — The letter, which was organized by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and signed by leaders from around 40 other right-leaning free market and small government groups, dismissed language allowing Medicare to negotiate the cost of certain drugs — in a massive blow to the industry — as “a solution in search of a problem.” — “Health care provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act have put America one step closer to socialized medicine,” the coalition argued. Left unmentioned is that at least a dozen of the letter’s signatories received donations ranging from $15,000 to $200,000 from PhRMA throughout 2021, according to Accountable.US’ analysis of the trade group’s tax filings for that year. — That includes $200,000 to the Pacific Research Institute, $115,000 to the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, $100,000 to the Consumer Action for a Strong Economy, and $75,000 apiece to FreedomWorks, the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, the Consumer Choice Center and more. LIFE COMES AT YOU FAST: Dan Ziegler’s move from Williams and Jensen lobbyist to Johnson adviser was so abrupt that it hasn’t yet been reflected in new lobbying disclosures hitting the Senate database. According to a disclosure filed overnight, Ford Motor Company will be one of Ziegler’s final new clients with the firm. — Ziegler, Susan Hirschmann, Laura Simmons and Phil Kiko started lobbying for the automaker at the beginning of October, according to the filing, which only lists trade, manufacturing, the auto industry and economics as the general lobbying issues the firm will be working on.
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