Paul Ryan shifts fundraising haul to support GOP agenda

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has been raising a lot of money in donations in the year since he assumed his position. According to the Wall Street Journal, in 2016 alone he has raised nearly $90 million and has transferred almost $41 million of that directly to the House Republicans’ campaign groups. Boehner moved only about $16.4 million two years ago.

Now that Republicans have won enough seats to hold control of Congress and after the stunning upset of Hillary Clinton put the GOP in the White House, Ryan has a plan to shift some of that haul to supporting the GOP agenda that he and other legislative members have been planning.

From the Journal:

After years of lambasting Democrats over the perceived pitfalls of the Affordable Care Act and other laws signed by President Barack Obama, Republicans will now shoulder the political burden of defending legislation passed in the coming two years while the House, Senate and White House are all under GOP control. ...

To help Republicans navigate any political perils, Mr. Ryan’s political team plans to invest more money next year in polling, research and communications strategy. The team has 12 staff members operating from the Republican National Committee’s headquarters, compared with House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi’s five-person political staff.

The goal, according to the WSJ, is for Ryan to bring together members from the centrist parts of the GOP and align them with the more conservative members of the House Freedom Caucus. Solidifying the factions will help Ryan lead a notoriously fractious conference and push through an ambitious legislative agenda.

For example, Ryan contributed almost $100,000 of his own donations to members of the House Freedom Caucus and campaigned with some to help them retain their seats.

And it may be paying off sooner rather than later. One member of the caucus is Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, who was just tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to run the budget office.

In addition to leading the GOP conference, Paul Ryan is proving to be one of the best fundraisers the GOP has.