These two points are important to consider.
Who has to register as lobbyist, and what do they gain that they wouldn’t get by not registering?
For a firm, are all employee’s registered? If not, what differences are there between those registered and those not?
I don’t know the answer to either of those, but presumably being a registered lobbyist also includes some type of better interaction with the government beyond what some non registered person can do.
Possibly along the lines of what @TheyCallMeMrPibb grants a credentialed vendor rep vs a random person for access to their company.
Denying these benefits of government interaction to former legislators certainly seems possible. It wouldn’t impact their ability to perform other jobs that provide advice or direction to companies or to others who are registered lobbyist for better ways to interact with government.
A big question though is still, is this once removed connection enough? Former Senator Bob can’t be a lobbyist anymore. Instead Bob works for a lobbying firm as an advisor. Bob provides advice for Jim who has never been a legislator and is registered. Jim does all the actual lobbying and interaction himself. Jim is somewhere between taking advice from Bob like “You should talk to Joe, tell him I say hi” and following a prescribed script from Bob with no deviation like a puppet.
Eliminating the benefits of being a registered lobbyist seems easy enough. If this matters at all, or just adds a small speed bump is something entirely different…
