Lobbying

The problem

Federal law already admits the problem it fails to solve. Members of the House must wait one year after leaving office before lobbying their former colleagues; Senators, two; senior executive officials, one or two.¹ The waits are short, and they cover only registered “lobbying contacts” — so a former official who plans the campaign, coaches the lobbyists, and arranges the meetings without personally making the call never triggers them at all. An estimated ten thousand unregistered “strategic advisors” now work alongside roughly ten thousand registered lobbyists, while reported lobbying spending runs above three billion dollars a year.²

Stronger rules have been tried, and they have not held. Over the past decade, presidents of both parties imposed five-year and two-year lobbying pledges by executive order; one order was revoked by the president who signed it, in the final hours of his term,³ and the other was rescinded within hours of the next transition.⁴ When voters went further — Missouri wrote a two-year revolving-door ban into its constitution by a 62% vote in 2018⁵ — a federal appeals court struck it down in Miller v. Ziegler (2024), holding that paid lobbying is protected political speech and the ban was not narrowly tailored.⁶ Courts increasingly read the First Amendment’s Petition Clause to cover the paid-influence business,⁷ which puts every cooling-off rule — including the existing federal statute — on uncertain ground. A rule that can be revoked by signature or struck down under the Constitution as it stands is not a rule legislation can secure. Only an amendment can.

The principle

Four parts, each doing a specific job:

Five years before lobbying for pay. Former members of Congress and senior officials wait five years before taking compensation to advocate before the federal government — or to advise others in advocating, which is the phrase that matters. Existing law reaches only registered lobbying contacts, so departing officials retitle themselves “strategic consultants” and begin the same work immediately;² this text reaches the coaching-and-strategy business, however styled. Five years is a deliberate number: it is the wait Americans in both parties find acceptable by nearly identical margins,⁸ and the period Canada’s federal lobbying law has administered nationally — evidence that it is workable in a peer democracy.⁹ Asked to pick one option, more Americans choose a five-year wait than a lifetime ban, and a lifetime ban standing alone splits the country roughly in half in both parties;⁸ the public’s clearest common ground is a long cooling-off period, and this proposal follows that evidence.

A lifetime bar on working for foreign governments. The one exception to the five-year rule. No peer democracy treats paid representation of a foreign state as ordinary petitioning,¹⁰ and neither does American public opinion.¹¹ The Constitution already forbids federal officers from accepting presents or emoluments from foreign states while in office;¹² this extends that principle beyond the end of federal service. The limiting phrase — “for the purpose of influencing any policy or action of the United States” — is essential: it leaves alone academics at foreign universities and employees of ordinary foreign companies, and reaches only paid agents of foreign governments and their political parties.

A safeguard for the citizen petitioner. The amendment restricts a business, never a right. Section 3 states in the constitutional text itself — not in implementing legislation — that no citizen, religious body, union, charity, or membership organization loses any part of the right to petition, and that no one who petitions without compensation can be made to register. It is written into the text because ratification requires it: the organizations across the political spectrum whose support any amendment needs all petition their government, and any text that could plausibly reach them would earn their opposition.

Enforcement that no officeholder can waive. The comparative evidence is blunt: revolving-door rules without an independent enforcer and real penalties become advisory theater¹³ — the United Kingdom’s review body cannot veto any appointment, and its strongest sanction is recommending a delay.¹⁴ So the text requires civil and criminal penalties and an investigator whose independence is protected by law, and forbids waiver by executive order or House rule — because the past decade showed that ethics rules held at the discretion of the people they restrict can be undone as soon as they become inconvenient.³

The draft text

Why it can pass

The revolving door is the most evenly bipartisan reform we have measured — partisan gaps run under ten points on nearly every question, and on foreign lobbying Republicans have at times led:

The same survey found 65% support for extending former members’ own wait from two years to five (65% of Republicans, 67% of Democrats),¹¹ and an earlier wave found the five-year wait at 79% and the lifetime foreign-government ban at 75% — with Republicans ahead of Democrats, 81% to 70% (Program for Public Consultation with the Center for Public Integrity, 2017).¹⁵ Behind the specific remedies sits a broader judgment: 73% of Americans say lobbyists have too much influence on Congress — 78% of Republicans, 72% of Democrats (Pew Research Center, 2023).¹⁶ One caution we state openly: nearly all of the remedy-specific numbers trace to a single research program across two waves; other pollsters have measured the problem, not the fix.

The precedents are unusually direct:

• Florida ratified the model. In 2018, Florida voters wrote a six-year revolving-door ban into their state constitution with nearly 79% of the vote — the highest share of any measure on that year’s ballot.¹⁷
• Missouri did too — 62% for a two-year ban the same year.⁵ That a federal court later struck it down⁶ is evidence for the vehicle, not against the idea: voters keep passing this, and only a federal amendment is beyond the courts’ current reading of the First Amendment.
• Congress keeps converging on the same text. Current bills extending the wait to five years,¹⁸ banning foreign-agent work for life,¹⁹ and closing the unregistered-advisor gap all have sponsors from both parties — in one case, senators from opposite ends of the political spectrum co-sponsoring an identical bill.²⁰ The demand is bipartisan; the statutory vehicle is what the courts have put in doubt.

If it passes: the law today and the day after

The article lengthens an existing criminal statute’s waits and adds a lifetime foreign-agent bar; it repeals nothing, and its executive-officer tier, penalties, and investigator exist only once Congress passes the law Section 4 requires. (How ratified amendments interact with existing law in general is covered in After ratification.)

Federal law today

Under 18 U.S.C. § 207, former Senators wait two years and former Representatives one before communicating with Congress for others; senior executive officials wait one or two years; the same statute already bars all of them for one year from representing a foreign government, and the U.S. Trade Representative for life.²¹ Violations carry up to a year in prison (five if willful) and a civil penalty of $50,000 or the fee received.²² The Lobbying Disclosure Act, with its 20%-of-time trigger, and the Foreign Agents Registration Act require disclosure, not abstention.²³

State law today

Most states set waits of six months to two years before a former legislator may lobby; Florida’s six years is the longest.²⁴ A 2019 count found seven states with no waiting period at all and more than a dozen with waits of two years or more for at least some officials.²⁵ At least four carry the rule in their constitutions — Florida, Colorado, North Dakota, and Missouri, whose provision a federal court struck down.²⁴¹⁷⁵ No state law conflicts with the article, which reaches only former federal officials and federal institutions; state bans remain state law, as exposed to Miller-type challenge as they are now.⁶

The day after

Section 207 stands as a shorter statutory floor; the registration acts stand. Sections 1 and 2 apply on ratification to the offices they name, but their coverage of an “officer of the United States in a senior position defined by law” waits for Congress to define it, and the penalties and independent investigator exist only when Congress legislates them, as Section 4 requires. Section 4’s last clause takes effect immediately: no executive order or House rule can waive the article. Filed bills offer models for the statute: the BLAST Act reaches “lobbying contacts regardless of registration status” with five-year and $50,000 penalties,²⁰ and the PURE Executive Act pairs a five-year agency ban with a lifetime foreign-government ban.¹⁹ Section 5 confines Sections 1 and 2 to people who leave office after ratification, so former officials — including those already registered as foreign agents — keep the rules they left under. Courts would decide whether the enforcing statute may keep § 207’s exceptions for representing states and universities, since enforcement legislation cannot change what an amendment says;²⁶ and whether an “officer whose independence is protected by law” may hold for-cause tenure under the Court’s removal-power cases.²⁷

What we left out

What we considered and set aside, and why:

• A lifetime ban on all lobbying. Bills proposing it have sponsors from both parties,²⁰ but it does not clear the bar: asked standalone, a lifetime ban on ex-members’ lobbying is acceptable to about half of Americans (47% of Republicans, 54% of Democrats), against roughly two-thirds in both parties for a five-year wait.⁸ The evidence says cooling-off, not permanent ban — the line holds at five years except for foreign governments. It returns if a standalone favor/oppose poll clears the bar in both parties.
• In-office lobbying restrictions — barring sitting officials from paid lobbying of other governments. This is the part of Florida’s scheme a federal court struck down,²⁸ and it is a state-law matter in any case.
• Registration mechanics and definitions in the text. The current statute’s registration trigger — lobbying must exceed 20% of time worked — is what created the unregistered-advisor profession,² and a numerical threshold frozen into constitutional text would age the same way. The amendment fixes the principle (compensated advocacy, and advising others in it); Congress sets the perimeter by law.
• Penalty amounts and the design of the enforcement office. The text requires penalties and a legally protected independent investigator, and stops there. Fine schedules and agency charts age badly in constitutional text; the floor is constitutional, the machinery is statutory.
• Gift bans, contingency-fee bans, and rules for people entering government from the industries they will regulate — real reforms, all of them statutory.

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