[4] Shortly after graduating, Pocan opened up his own small business, a printing company named Budget Signs & Specialties, which he continues to own and run as of 2012.

[4] In 1998 Pocan's longtime friend and ally, Tammy Baldwin, gave up her seat in the Wisconsin State Assembly to make a successful run for Congress.

[15] After the drone strikes on aid workers from World Central Kitchen in April 2024, Pocan, James P. McGovern, Jan Schakowsky, Nancy Pelosi and 36 other Democratic members of Congress urged President Joe Biden in an open letter to reconsider planned arms shipments to the Israeli military.

Pocan used his membership to investigate the organization's agenda and sponsors and wrote a series of articles on his experiences with ALEC for the Madison-based magazine The Progressive from 2008 to 2011.

As the Saudis use famine as a weapon of war, starving millions of innocent Yemenis to near death, the United States fuels, coordinates and provides bombs for Saudi airstrikes, and secretly deploys the military to participate in on-the-ground operations with Saudi troops.”[32] In April 2019, after the House passed the resolution withdrawing American support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, Pocan was one of nine lawmakers to sign a letter to President Trump requesting a meeting with him and urging him to sign "Senate Joint Resolution 7, which invokes the War Powers Act of 1973 to end unauthorized US military participation in the Saudi-led coalition's armed conflict against Yemen's Houthi forces, initiated in 2015 by the Obama administration."

They asserted the "Saudi-led coalition's imposition of an air-land-and-sea blockade as part of its war against Yemen’s Houthis has continued to prevent the unimpeded distribution of these vital commodities, contributing to the suffering and death of vast numbers of civilians throughout the country" and that Trump's signing the resolution would give a "powerful signal to the Saudi-led coalition to bring the four-year-old war to a close.

[34] Pocan, Pramila Jayapal and Barbara Lee attempted to reduce the size of the $740 billion National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, but their motion was rejected 93-324.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus cochairs Jayapal and Pocan declared: "Every handout to Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman is money that could have been spent on ending [COVID-19] pandemic, keeping small businesses afloat and staving off an economic meltdown.

"[35] In July 2019 Pocan voted against a House resolution introduced by Democratic Congressman Brad Schneider of Illinois opposing the Global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement targeting Israel.

He credits his political activism in part to an incident soon after he graduated from college and opened his printing business, when two men followed him after he left a gay bar and beat him with a baseball bat while they called him "faggot" and other anti-gay slurs.