JUAN GONZALEZ: The Internal Revenue Service has been asked to investigate the nonprofit tax status of a Washington-based organization that its critics say has played a key role in helping corporations secretly draft model pro-business legislation that has been used by state lawmakers across the country. The American Legislative Exchange Council was formed nearly four decades ago and has become, in its own words, "the nation’s largest, non-partisan, individual public-private membership association of state legislators."

But the organization, often known simply as ALEC, has come under increasing scrutiny in recent months for its role in drafting bills to attack workers’ rights, roll back environmental regulations, privatize education, deregulate major industries, and pass voter ID laws. Thanks to ALEC, at least a dozen states have recently adopted a nearly identical resolution asking Congress to compel the Environmental Protection Agency to stop regulating carbon emissions.

AMY GOODMAN: Earlier this week, the Center for Media and Democracy released 800 model bills approved by companies and lawmakers at recent ALEC meetings. Unlike many other organizations, ALEC’s membership includes both state lawmakers and corporate executives. At its meetings, the corporations and politicians gather behind closed doors to discuss and vote on model legislation. Before the bills are publicly introduced in state legislatures, they’re cleansed of any reference to who actually wrote them.

According to the Center, beneficiaries of recent model bills by ALEC include the tobacco firm Altria/Philip Morris; the health insurance firm Humana; the pharmaceutical company Bayer; and the private prison company Corrections Corporation of America, CCA.

For more, we go to Madison, Wisconsin, to speak with Lisa Graves, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy. We invited a member from ALECon to join us, but they did not return our phone calls or emails.