As a former lobbyist in DC, I support this. The revolving door makes perfect sense in a closed loop of Washington, but in my experience it has led to corruption and carrying the status quo. As far as lobbying for foreign governments, while not having worked on that directly, I do know foreign governments pay a tremendous amounts of money to hire former members of congress. If you're curious look up the lobbying disclosure database. [1]<p>1. <a href="http://disclosures.house.gov/ld/ldsearch.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://disclosures.house.gov/ld/ldsearch.aspx</a>
> Trump is allowed to waive any of the restrictions.<p>That is an important exception. The fact it exists basically means this is a fig leaf he might rescind on his last day in office.
Not everything Trump does is bad. The media will either spin this as ineffective, or simply won't report it, since this is a positive thing that Trump did and those kinds of stories simply won't be tolerated in today's mainstream media environment. But it is nice to see him carrying out the promises that he made to his base, even if we don't all agree with them. That is rare among politicians.
Not much new here.<p><a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/01/28/512201631/trumps-executive-order-on-ethics-pulls-word-for-word-from-obama-clinton" rel="nofollow">http://www.npr.org/2017/01/28/512201631/trumps-executive-ord...</a>
I think overall this is a good idea, but it's important to consider the temporary nature of it as an executive order. And of course the use of exceptions.<p>My question, that I have not seen discussed and am too lazy to do the math on, is this: In the next four years, how many democrats vs republicans are likely to retire / leave office? Will this have any partisan benefit?<p>This goes for term limits as well, which I think also could be a good idea pending execution.