Koch Industries, Business Groups Lobby Against Donor Disclosure

Koch Industries and giant pro-business trade groups like the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers have been flexing their K Street muscle in an effort to prevent the Securities and Exchange Commission or Congress from requiring them to disclose donations to politically active nonprofits. Those groups and others paid lobbyists in the first quarter of 2013 to weigh in against such initiatives, including a possible set of proposed rules from the SEC requiring publicly traded corporations to disclose their contributions, which may be released as early as next week. A petition asking the agency to take such action, pushed by a coalition of Democrats, union supporters and activist shareholders, has attracted more than half-a-million comments on the SEC's website, almost all of them favorable.

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