In mid-February, freshman Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kansas, whose top campaign donor is  Koch Industries, proposed a successful amendment in an appropriations bill to defund a new public product safety database recently soft-launched by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Two years ago, when the bill was being debated, Koch lobbied on this specific issue, citing the "consumer reporting database provision" in legislation that passed that year.

In addition, the congressman's chief of staff, Mark Chenoweth, worked formerly both for Koch Industries and as chief legal counsel for Anne Northup, a Republican CPSC commissioner who has opposed the new database ...