Nick Schwellenbach joined the Center for Effective Government as its Senior Fiscal Policy Analyst in March 2013. He is an expert on defense, contractor accountability, and government oversight. Nick formerly managed the nonprofit Project On Government Oversight’s (POGO) investigations, covering a wide range of topics from financial regulation to drug and medical device safety to the nuclear weapons complex and weaknesses in the Inspector General system. Prior to rejoining POGO, Schwellenbach was a staff writer at the Center for Public Integrity from 2008 to 2010, where he wrote about congressional ethics and defense spending. He and the Center were finalists for the 2009 Scripps Howard Raymond Clapper Washington Reporting award for investigative work on the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. Previously, Schwellenbach was an investigator at POGO from 2004 through 2008. His work on lavish Air Force accommodations for generals was one of three POGO investigations cited by the Society of Professional Journalists when they awarded POGO its prestigious national Sunshine Award for improving government transparency. Nick has testified before Congress multiple times: on the need for stronger whistleblower protections in order to improve congressional oversight – which, along with years of advocacy by a coalition, ultimately led to the most major reform to federal employee protections in more than a decade; on how to improve contract auditing that led to Congress granting the Defense Contract Audit Agency stronger power to access contractor records; and on how to better prevent and combat U.S.-funded human trafficking in war zones, reforms that made their way into a new executive order and a new law strengthening the anti-trafficking legal framework. Nick earned his M.A. in Journalism and Public Affairs from American University and his B.A. in History from the University of Texas-Austin. Follow him on Twitter: @schwellenbach