Congress could prohibit

A conflict of interest means a situation in which an individual has an interest (usually a business interest) in a matter which comes up for legislation, or in a court case before a judge. So, for example, if a member of the Senate has a highway construction business in his or her home state, than any bill, any piece of legislation which would concern building a highway in that state with Federal money would represent a conflict of interest. The Senator could be suspected of voting for highway construction with Federal money because he or she can get that money if their highway construction company builds the highway. Similarly, if a judge owns a large amount of stock in a corporation which is being sued, it would be a conflict of interest for that judge to hear the case against the corporation. Generally, a judge would recuse him or herself, which means that he or she would acknowledge the conflict of interest, and say that he or she cannot hear the case, because he or she has an interest in the corporation being sued.

A lobbyist is someone who goes to a legislature (such as a state legislature) or to the United States Congress, and attempts to convince members of the legislature, or members of Congress to vote for certain measures which would benefit the people whom the lobbyist represents. If i owned a company which manufactures ammunition for machine guns, i might hire a lobbyist to go to Congress and attempt to convince members of Congress that they should buy more machine guns for the army, which would very likely result in my company selling more machine gun ammunition to the army. This is not illegal (although i personally think it should be).

What this article is saying is that people who work for the government, and who then leave the government, should not be allowed to work as lobbyists for three years after they leave the government, because they know too much about how the government does things, and they know too many people who are still working for the government. The author is saying that in some cases, this could involve a conflict of interest. So, for example, a General in the United States Air Force might retire from the military, and then get a job with an aerospace firm which manufactures aircraft--if he or she then became a lobbyist, they would have a conflict of interest, in that they would know the procure procedure and the procurement officers, but would not be working for the good of the government and the taxpayer, but would be working for the profit of their new employer.

it looks like biasing or in favor of

but one thing strikes me ...

why 3 years ? does those guys cant do other work than lobbying ? they could do some other work and live .

At the level of general officers in the military, or the higher level of civil services employees of the government, most assignments are for a two year period of time. So, if a general officer or an admiral were made the commander of Central Command (which is responsible for the middle east), two years later, they would be given a different assignment, or would be asked to retire. Therefore, after three years, a former government employee would very likely no longer have a close personal relationship with officers or high ranking civil servants who could unfairly influence government policy in favor of the former employee.



I can make no sense of these sentences. I don't know what you are asking.

thanks for the explanation.

that helped me a lot

Come on Sentana.
The question was why couldn't they find other work at which they could make a living even if they had to wait 3 years to lobby.

Re: Congress could prohibit


As opposed to what they were doing while they were serving in government?

If I am not mistaken legislation has been passed that will do just that. lott resigned from congress inorder to beat the date of it's implementation

That's not quite right, Revel. Tintin asked why three years (for which i offered a speculative answer), and the lack of grammatical coherence does not lead to the conclusion you reached--although you may be correct, i was not about to respond to a meaningless question, unless and until Tintim made more clear what he (?) was asking. In which case, i would have said it was a meaningless question.