Congress Watch

Congress Watch is a division of Public Citizen that champions consumer interests before the U.S. Congress and serves as a government watchdog. They engage in public education and advocacy, and are focused on the following:

• Strengthening health, safety and financial protections. Their work in this area covers consumer financial protection, patient safety, consumer product safety, auto safety and worker safety.
• Ensuring access to the courts to hold corporations accountable for wrongdoing. Our work in this area covers forced arbitration, whistleblower protections, medical liability, preserving state consumer laws (pre-emption) and court secrecy.
• Strengthening the democratic process by exposing and combating the harmful impact of money in politics. Their work in this area focuses on money in politics, government ethics, lobbying reform and open government.

Staff Information

David Arkush is Director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division. He is an expert on consumer product safety and financial protection, access to justice, and money in politics. In 2007 he was a teaching fellow in the Appellate Litigation Program at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he published a scholarly article. He has testified before Congress, appeared on CNN, CBS, ABC, CNBC, NPR, and is frequently quoted publications such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, the L.A. Times, the Huffington Post, the Chicago Tribune, Roll Call, and the Hill.

Craig Holman, Ph.D. is currently Government Affairs Lobbyist for Public Citizen. As Legislative Representative, he serves as the organization’s Capitol Hill lobbyist on campaign finance and governmental ethics. Previously, he served as Senior Policy Analyst at NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice. Holman has assisted in drafting campaign finance reform legislation, including pay-to-play legislation, and has conducted numerous research projects on the initiative process and the impact of money in politics. He has also served as an expert witness or principal researcher in several court cases defending campaign finance laws, including McConnell v. Federal Election Commission.

Taylor Lincoln is Research Director of Congress Watch. He has authored or co-authored several ground-breaking reports for Congress Watch, including the lobbying campaign of the "super-wealthy" to repeal the estate tax, the stealth effort of U.S. Senator Bill Frist and the pharmaceutical industry to craft a liability shield for products used to treat a pandemic illness, and the sum of campaign contributions from lobbyists to members of Congress. Before joining Public Citizen, Lincoln worked as a reporter for three Washington, D.C., area newspapers: The Federal Paper, the Potomac Tech Journal and the Montgomery Journal.