You pay hardly anything to the agency -- their fees are a rounding error compared to all your other costs. And while it's valuable for some jobs to have on your resume that you used to work there, so many people have done so over the years that it doesn't raise any salaries; it's merely that for certain regulatory roles it's good to have someone who knows what it's like to receive the filings so you can make them clear.
It's utterly unlike the legislator->lobbyist revenue model or, say, the Department of the Interior where the regulators were doing drugs and having sex with employees of the companies they were regulating. It's more like "oh, you worked on DevOps at $LARGE_COMPANY_X, our needs are similar to theirs." Not the magic path to riches.
When employees at the FDA leave and take positions at one of the companies they had a hand in approving something for, at an increased salary. The appearance of impropriety is blatant.
Regardless of it actually happening or not it looks terrible. This should never happen
> Regardless of it actually happening or not it looks terrible. This should never happen
I understand the problem you're describing, but consider what you're asking for: people with competence and experience should be barred from taking jobs that require competence and experience? Non-competes have the same problem.
I am not in this field, but I guess that as an employee at the FDA you approve drugs for all the big pharma companies, which aside from the FDA are the major employers that value their skillset. It may be that if you prohibit FDA employees to transition to one of the big pharma companies, you're telling them that they can either work at the FDA forever or have to leave their field
"Take a job with the Fed, sign up for a lifetime of lower income so that HN can nod sagely about avoiding the appearance of impropriety" is a recipe to get no one to ever work for the government.
“Hand in approving” is an important factor: approval is such a complex process no one person is really decisive, except possibly at the very very beginning.
Drug companies used to hire multiple trucks simply to deliver their submissions.
It's utterly unlike the legislator->lobbyist revenue model or, say, the Department of the Interior where the regulators were doing drugs and having sex with employees of the companies they were regulating. It's more like "oh, you worked on DevOps at $LARGE_COMPANY_X, our needs are similar to theirs." Not the magic path to riches.