Reform #6. Extend the lobbying cool-off period

When a member of Congress leaves office, federal law does not let them begin lobbying their former colleagues right away. A former member of the House must wait one year; a former senator must wait two.¹ This is the cooling-off period. The restriction on members of Congress dates to the Ethics Reform Act of 1989, built on the theory that a brief enforced distance between holding office and selling access to it would blunt the conflict of interest the revolving door otherwise creates.²

A year is shorter than a single session of Congress. When the waiting period ends, the committee assignments are the same, the staff are the same, the leadership is the same, and the relationships a departing member spent a career building are all still in place. As discussed earlier in the section on representatives' obligations to their constituents, nearly two-thirds of the members of the 115th Congress who left for the private sector took jobs in the influence business, and the committee chairs and party leaders were the most likely to make the move. A pause measured in months does not interrupt that pattern.

A majority of Americans would like to see this cooling-off period extended. In the 2022 University of Maryland Program for Public Consultation survey, the same series that produced the figures on stock trading and Citizens United, respondents were given a briefing on the current rule and asked to weigh the arguments for and against extending it. Sixty-five percent favored lengthening the cooling-off period to five years, including sixty-five percent of Republicans and sixty-seven percent of Democrats.³ Support held across the political map; in both the most Republican and the most Democratic districts, large majorities favored the longer wait.⁴ PPC had asked a similar question in 2017 and found seventy-seven percent in favor.⁵

The same survey marks where the agreement stops. Offered the option of going further, to a permanent lifetime ban on former members lobbying at all, only thirty-two percent agreed.⁶ What Americans broadly support is a longer wait rather than a closed door, and the distinction matters, because the legislation now drawing the most attention asks for the closed door.

A five-year cooling-off period has been written into bills repeatedly. The Public Service Integrity Act in the House and the Cleaning up Washington Act in the Senate both proposed extending the ban on former members to a uniform five years, along with a longer restriction on senior congressional staff.⁷ Neither advanced. Since the 117th Congress, the five-year proposal has had no prominent vehicle, and the legislative attention on the revolving door has moved past it. In July 2025, Representatives Joe Neguse and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced the Close the Revolving Door Act, which would impose a lifetime lobbying ban on former members.⁸ In May 2026, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Rick Scott introduced the BLAST Act, which would do the same, replacing the cooling-off periods with a permanent ban and authorizing the Justice Department to pursue criminal penalties for violations.⁹ The BLAST Act pairs one of the Senate's most progressive members with a close ally of President Trump. Neither bill has received a floor vote.

On most of the reforms in these pages, the public has settled on a position and Congress has declined to act on it. Here the public settled on a five-year wait, and Congress has passed neither that nor the longer ban some of its members now propose instead. The waiting period a former representative faces today is the same one year it has been since 1989.

Footnotes

1. Under 18 U.S.C. § 207, former Members of the House are barred for one year, and former Senators for two years, from lobbying Congress. https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/IN10625.html ↩

2. The Ethics Reform Act of 1989, Public Law 101-194, extended post-employment lobbying restrictions to Members of Congress. ↩

3. Program for Public Consultation, lobbying policy survey of 2,606 registered voters fielded June 13–29, 2022. https://publicconsultation.org/united-states/large-bipartisan-majority-favors-increasing-lobbying-restrictions-on-former-members-of-congress-and-other-government-officials/ ↩

4. Same source. ↩

5. Program for Public Consultation, lobbying policy survey of 2,482 registered voters, September 7 – October 3, 2017. https://publicconsultation.org/united-states/overwhelming-bipartisan-majorities-favor-greater-restrictions-on-lobbying-by-former-government-officials/ ↩

6. Program for Public Consultation, lobbying policy survey, 2022. ↩

7. Identified by the Program for Public Consultation as the bills, current at the time of its 2022 survey, that would extend the post-employment lobbying ban to five years. ↩

8. Close the Revolving Door Act of 2025, introduced July 10, 2025, by Representatives Joe Neguse and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. https://neguse.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-neguse-and-rep-ocasio-cortez-introduce-legislation-impose-lifetime-ban ↩

9. BLAST Act, introduced May 14, 2026, by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Rick Scott. https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-rick-scott-introduce-bipartisan-bill-to-ban-former-members-of-congress-from-lobbying ↩