Major Fellowship Activities: Bratt researched weapons systems and budgetary information, and wrote analyses of military budgets up for a vote in Congress. He focused on the pork projects that are included in the military budget, and tried to determine the Congressional district each project benefits. He published a letter to the editor to the Washington Post entitled “Military Spending Adds Up,” written in response to an opinion-editorial piece by former Defense Secretary Perry and former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Shalikashvili, which argued that current levels of military spending are sufficient to solve any military readiness problems that may exist. He wrote another letter to the editor which appeared in the Washington Times entitled “Passing The Buck On Military Readiness,” written in response to an op-ed piece by Representatives Bill Young and Jerry Lewis. He wrote a letter to the editor which ran in The Florida Times-Union as “Military Readiness: Time to Abandon Two-War Strategy.” He wrote an op-ed entitled “Osprey Is a Bad Bird” which appeared in the Philadelphia City Paper. He wrote another op-ed, “Preparing For Tomorrow’s Conflicts With Yesterday’s Strategies” which was published in the San Diego Union-Tribune. He wrote a letter concerning National Missile Defense which appeared in American Outlook (published by the Hudson Institute) in its May/June 2001 issue entitled “Bombs Away.” In December he appeared as an expert on military spending on the Tom Clark News Hour, a radio show broadcast on Wisconsin Public Radio, where he spoke primarily about the military’s two-war strategy and answered questions from listeners for an hour. He drafted several press releases about the nomination of Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense, and recent developments with the V-22 Osprey. As a result of the press releases, Council staff were quoted in The Chicago Tribune, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times. Following the nomination of Colin Powell as Secretary of State and Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense, he helped draft prospective questions for Senators to ask the nominees at the committee hearings and attended the nomination hearings for Secretary Powell. He researched and wrote several sections for the Council’s military spending Briefing Book regarding military spending as corporate welfare and about several weapons programs.
Current Activities: Bratt is Principal at Jeremy Bratt Consulting, a government relations consulting firm serving nonprofits in and around Washington, DC. He is a member of the board of Street Sense Media, a DC-based homelessness organization. He was previously Director of External Affairs at Better Markets, where he was responsible for the organization’s interactions with Congress, federal regulators, and allied public interest organizations who share Better Markets’ goal of promoting the public interest in the financial markets and protecting Wall Street reform. He was formerly Deputy Director of Congressional and Legislative Affairs at the Department of the Interior. Before that he was Legislative Director for Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and managed the Senator’s legislative portfolio. He was previously Legislative Director for Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND), who was the Chairman of the Energy and Water Subcommittee on the Senate Appropriations Committee, which funds Department of Energy nuclear weapons programs. Bratt previously worked as a Senior Professional Staff member on the House Agriculture Committee, where he provided strategic advice to the Chairman, Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN) and worked with the Committee’s members to advance their legislative agenda, as Deputy Chief of Staff and Legislative Director to Congressman Tim Walz (MN-01), and before that as a Legislative Assistant to Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and as a Legislative Aide for Senator Mark Dayton (D-MN).