ABOUT THE FIVE YEAR BAN FOR LOBBYISTS IN THE U.S.

Everyone being vetted for a high-level appointment must pledge not to become a registered lobbyist for five years after they leave the Trump’s administration and never lobby for a foreign government. This applies to registered state and federal lobbyists.  In addition, all current registered lobbyists must be prepared to deregister in order to be considered for a post. Every person who joins the administration will be asked to sign a lobbying ban form that states they are not registered lobbyist. If they are they will have to provide evidence of their termination.

The key thing for the Trump administration is going to be that people going out of government won’t be able to use that service to enrich themselves for a five-year period.

The five-year ban greatly expands on lobbying ethics rules that impose a one-year or two-year ban, often referred to as ‘cooling-off period’ on lawmakers and administration officials becoming lobbyists after leaving the government. Admittedly, the five-year ban will make it harder for Mr. Trump to recruit people to work in the administration. It is common for administration officials at all levels to join the law and lobbying industry after leaving the government because their policy expertise is highly valued by firms and companies. Limiting people’s post-government employment prospects for five years will probably discourage many people in the Washington policy community, lobbyists or not, for wanting to join the administration

The real question concerns the legal definition of “lobbyist” and how exactly the ban will be enforced.

The Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 set up three thresholds that must be met for someone to be considered a lobbyist. The most important of these is that you have to spend at least 20 percent of your time in any three month period lobbying for any one client. So you can make $3 million a year lobbying, but if you limit yourself to pushing XYZ Company’s  interests to just 19 percent of your time, you’re not a lobbyist. And everyone in Washington is free to make this determination on their own. This initially didn’t matter because there were no consequences to registering as a lobbyist beyond the fact the public would be able to find out about it. In fact, lobbyists wanted to register so their clients would take them seriously. That changed with the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007, which prohibited ex-cabinet officials, members of Congress and their senior staff from lobbying in various ways for periods of one to two years after they left office.

This did not necessarily lead to less lobbying, but it did lead to over 5,000 lobbyists de-registering in 2008 and 2009. Currently, there are fewer than 10,000 federally registered lobbyists  but there are likely at least another 10,000 who would be considered lobbyists under any common sense definition.

Under the Trump’s plan, the definition of lobbyist will be expanded to close all the loopholes that former government officials use by labeling themselves consultants and advisors when everyone knows they are lobbyists.