A 2007 law requires retiring lawmakers to notify a congressional ethics committee when they begin negotiating for a new job. But in the fifteen years since the law took effect, more than five hundred federal lawmakers have retired, with many taking lucrative gigs as lobbyists, lawyers, or trade association officials — and only eighteen departing representatives and senators have filed such disclosures, according to a review by us.

This year promises to be no different. Fifty House members and a half-dozen senators have announced plans to retire; only one outgoing representative has notified an ethics panel about his postcongressional job prospects. Loopholes in the 2007 ethics law and a lack of enforcement have allowed retiring lawmakers to routinely negotiate future jobs with corporate lobbying firms without ever notifying the public whom they are supposedly still representing.

The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (HLOGA) was passed in 2007, largely as a result of the postcongressional activities of former representative Billy Tauzin, a walking conflict of interest who crafted health care legislation that steered billions of tax dollars to members of drug industry lobbying powerhouse Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). Tauzin, a Louisiana Democrat-turned-Republican lawmaker, retired in 2005 to take a $2 million job with the lobbying group — one day after his congressional term expired. His compensation had risen to $11.6 million when he left Big Pharma in 2010.