Lucian Bebchuk and Robert Jackson opine that:
Last week, the House Appropriations Committee included in its 2016 appropriations bill for financial services agencies a provision that would prevent the SEC from developing rules that would require public companies to disclose their political spending. Although this provision is unlikely to become law, its adoption is regrettable. In our view, Congress should let the SEC do its job and use its expert judgment—free of political pressures in any direction—to determine what information should be disclosed to public-company investors.
The notion that the SEC process will be apolitical and lead to a technocratic solution is, of course, risible. The activists who are backing this proposal are folks like unions, liberal NGOs, and Democrats. These interest groups think political spending disclosure will defund the right by deterring corporations from contributing to GOP candidates:
The resignation of Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich over a personal $1,000 donation he made in 2008 in support of California’s Proposition 8 shows the dark side of campaign disclosure laws and how liberals are using them to intimidate, harass, and bully anyone who disagrees with them on social and cultural issues. ...
What has been happening in recent years is no different then what racist government officials in Alabama were trying to do in the late 1950s when they subpoenaed the NAACP’s membership lists.
The left-liberal community therefore will bring enormous pressure to bear on the three Democrat members of the SEC, whose increasing willingness to push through highly partisan rules on a 3-2 basis will make them easy targets.
What people like Bebchuk, Jackson, ands the other securities law professors they've recruited are doing is giving academic cover to a highly partisan attack. Their efforts to add a neutral patina to a biased project must be resisted.
