Sponsors (8)
Introduced May 21, 2025 by Joseph Neguse · Last progress May 21, 2025
The bill increases transparency and strengthens anti‑revolving‑door enforcement to reduce special‑interest influence on Congress, but does so by restricting post‑government employment and imposing new compliance, privacy, and administrative costs that could disproportionately burden former officials, small organizations, and government resources.
Taxpayers and the general public will face reduced revolving‑door influence on Congress because the bill strengthens bans and criminal penalties for prohibited lobbying by former Members and extends cooling‑off periods for former staff, lowering special‑interest access to lawmakers.
Journalists, watchdogs, nonprofits, and everyday Americans gain much easier access to lobbyist and revolving‑door disclosure information via a single searchable site (lobbyists.gov) and an API, improving transparency about who lobbies Congress and who former officials now work for.
Law‑enforcement and congressional ethics officials get clearer enforcement tools (a statutory criminal prohibition, defined factors for 'substantial lobbying contact,' and an explicit $500,000 civil penalty), which should streamline prosecutions and compliance notices.
Former Members of Congress and former congressional staff will face significantly reduced post‑government employment options (including representation or lobbying) for extended periods, cutting their near‑term earnings and narrowing the hiring pool for advocacy and policy roles.
DOJ, congressional offices, and ethics offices will face increased compliance, investigatory, and litigation costs to enforce the new bans and definitions, potentially diverting resources from other priorities and raising administrative burdens for taxpayers.
Centralized public disclosures and naming of former officials in searchable databases can cause reputational harm, privacy concerns, and legal exposure for listed individuals and firms, and may chill legitimate advocacy or noncommercial speech.
Based on analysis of 7 sections of legislative text.
Imposes longer post-employment bans and a lifetime ban for certain former congressional officials, creates a joint public lobbyists.gov, restricts hiring of recent lobbyists, and raises LDA civil penalties to $500,000.
Prohibits former Members of Congress and certain elected chamber officers from ever communicating or appearing before congressional offices on behalf of a private party to influence official action, and lengthens cooling-off periods for many former congressional staff to six years. Creates a joint searchable public website (lobbyists.gov) for Lobbying Disclosure Act filings, bars certain recently active lobbyists and foreign agents from being hired by Members or committees for six years, requires large lobbying firms to report former senior congressional officials they employ, and raises a major civil penalty to $500,000. The bill adds criminal and civil enforcement hooks, allows ethics committees to waive some hiring bans for compelling national needs, authorizes up to $100,000 for the new website in FY2026, and provides mechanisms (including referrals to the U.S. Attorney in D.C.) to detect underreporting by lobbying entities.