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As a labor dispute threatens to shut down the National Football League next season, the two sides are moving the game to a new playing field: Capitol Hill.

The union that represents pro football players has hired a coterie of new lobbyists and public-relations officials in recent months to help make its case to Congress that the NFL owners are acting unfairly in labor talks. The NFL Players Association and its backers say lawmakers can step in because of a congressional antitrust exemption that allows the league to negotiate lucrative broadcast rights.

The lobbying efforts include visits scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday by more than 30 players and their families, who will meet with lawmakers and legislative staffers. The players plan to emphasize the potential economic impact that an NFL shutdown could have on local communities, according to union officials.

“The most important thing that can happen for us on Capitol Hill is to just level the playing field,” Domonique Foxworth, a Baltimore Ravens cornerback and a member of the NFLPA’s Executive Committee, said in a recent conference call with reporters, noting that the NFL “has been lobbying on Capitol Hill for a number of years now.”

“It’s important that they see our faces too and realize another team is also playing in the game,” Foxworth added.

But the NFL, which has its own sizable lobbying operation in Washington, says Congress should stay out of what amounts to a private-sector business negotiation.

“This deal will be reached at the negotiating table, not in the halls of Congress,” said chief NFL lobbyist Jeff Miller, a former counsel to Sen. Herbert Kohl (D-Wis.). “We don’t think a third-party intervention, whether it’s for Congress or anyone else, helps you get a deal here.”

The current labor deal between the NFL and the union expires in March, and players say they expect a work stoppage, initiated by the owners, if a deal isn’t reached. Both sides have been jockeying for leverage and public-relations points in recent weeks, with the main sticking points being a demand by owners to cut back salaries by about $1 billion league-wide and add two games to the season.

One strategy available to players is to decertify the union, which could keep them from being locked out and expose the league to an antitrust lawsuit. Under the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, the NFL is allowed to ignore antitrust laws in negotiating a television package for the league at large, but the courts have rejected NFL attempts to broaden the exception to other areas.

Some lawmakers, including former senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, have toyed with the idea of rescinding the NFL’s exemption. But Congress in general has been reluctant to get involved in labor disputes pitting two unsympathetic parties – millionaire players and billionaire owners – against each other.

The NFL’s lobbying expenditures are expected to exceed $1.5 million in 2010, including payments to Democratic-leaning firms Elmendorf Strategies and Glover Park Group, according to records and officials. The league’s political-action committee also showered more than $600,000 in contributions to members of both parties in the 2010 cycle, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign finances.

The players association does not have a PAC and only spends about a third as much on lobbying as the league. But the union has been attempting to close the gap in recent months, hiring Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock to join its main lobbying firm, Patton Boggs. The players association has also enlisted the help of Singer Bonjean Strategies, a bipartisan public-relations firm with close ties to Congress.

Over the past year, the union has organized scores of visits to Capitol Hill by players and other representatives, and is circulating letters to be signed by lawmakers urging the league to cut a better deal for players. The powerful AFL-CIO union also weighed in with a letter last fall to team owners.

Cleveland Browns linebacker Scott Fujita said Congress has an interest in the NFL labor dispute because of the potential damage to local economies if there is a lockout. The players association claims a shutdown would cost each NFL city $160 million in lost business, a figure that the league and some outside analysts say is inflated.

Fujita said many football cities such as Cleveland are already struggling amid the economic downturn. “To lose out on the money that would come in from an NFL season, it’s going to be devastating,” he said. “So from that standpoint it is the government’s business and I think it is important for them to be involved.”

But Miller, the NFL lobbyist, said the league will push back with its own message that Congress has no business interfering with the labor talks.

“We’re not looking to ask Congress to be involved, but we can’t abdicate the playing field,” Miller said. “Our effort is going to be to make sure that members of Congress are aware of our point of view.”

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The Federal Reserve will release details of the banks it lent money to during the financial crisis after losing a court battle to keep the information private.

Bloomberg, the parent company of Bloomberg News, sued the Fed under the Freedom of Information Act, demanding that it release names and details of the banks that borrowed money from the “discount window,” where U.S. banks have turned for emergency funds — confidentially — for nearly a century.

Federal courts ruled that the Fed had no compelling reason to keep the information private. On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by a group representing large banks, meaning the judgments by the lower courts will stand.

The Fed “will fully comply with the courts’ decisions and is preparing to make the information available,” said Michelle Smith, a spokeswoman for the Fed, declining to specify when the disclosures will be made. She said some of the information sought in the Bloomberg suit has already been made public in compliance with the Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul passed last summer.

“The Federal Reserve forgot that it is the central bank for the people of the United States and not a private academy where decisions of great importance may be withheld from public scrutiny,” Matthew Winkler, editor in chief of Bloomberg News, said in a written statement. “The Fed must be accountable to Congress, especially in disclosing what it does with the people’s money.”

The discount window allows banks to receive emergency funds by pledging collateral and is a key part of the Fed’s role as “lender of last resort,” backstopping the banking system.

Lawyers for the Fed and the Clearing House Association, a group of the big banks, had argued that secrecy was justified because publicizing the names of banks that received loans could create a greater stigma to the practice and would hurt the Fed’s ability to respond to financial crises.

Courts had little sympathy for that argument, finding that with public funds in play, the federal Freedom of Information Act required disclosure.

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Your initial impression of a country is often hard to shake.

Late on my first night in Japan in the 1990s, I stared out the window of my room on a high floor of a downtown Tokyo hotel. What I saw was a vast, sprawling, modern city of twinkling lights that brimmed with human and technological energy.

And then I imagined the same scene in 1945. In his magnificent book “Embracing Defeat,” about Japan in the wake of World War II, John W. Dower quotes the first foreign journalist to enter Tokyo after the armistice.

“Everything had been flattened,” Russell Brines wrote. “Only thumbs stood up from the flatlands — the chimneys of bathhouses, heavy house safes and an occasional stout building with heavy iron shutters.”

Dower picks it up from there: “The first photographs and newsreel footage from the conquered land captured these endless vistas of urban rubble for American audiences thousands of miles away who had never really grasped what it meant to incinerate great cities.” Dower notes that nationwide, close to 9 million people were homeless.

What has stayed with me since that night is a sense of the extraordinary achievement of the Japanese people in the years since the war’s end. Yes, Japan has been in the doldrums for quite a while. But if the country has hit stasis, it is stasis at a remarkably high level. Every time I read about Japanese decline, my reaction is, “Maybe, but .?.?.”

The next morning, I met up with a Japanese friend, an ardent advocate of reform in the country’s politics and habits. I could not resist telling him that looking out that window, I had been struck by what the Japanese postwar system had made possible and that if I were a Japanese citizen, I’d probably be skeptical of the reformers. How could you not question whether the promises of reform would live up to the accomplishments of the previous half-century? In ribbing my reformer friend, I had stumbled upon one of Japan’s core problems: It has, simultaneously, been clamoring for change and worried it would backfire.

It’s thus not surprising that ever since Japan was hit by an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, I have identified completely with all the commentary about Japan’s “resiliency.” If ever there was a comeback-kid sort of country, this is surely it.

But there has been an undercurrent of doubt. Would this catastrophe really unleash the transformation Japan has sought for so long? Or would it instead symbolize the inevitable waning of a once powerful nation that finds itself the victim of a declining population and a political and economic system allergic to reform and transparency?

My bet is on a rebound, partly because I have always had trouble buying into a view popular among Japan’s critics of a society made up of a mass of regimented conformists defined by an unease with outsiders and a smoldering nationalism.

This overlooks strong dissenting strains that have long animated Japanese life. They have produced cultural experimentation alongside political paralysis and a remarkable capacity for openness and adaptation in a society so often described as closed. A Foreign Policy magazine writer could speak in 2002 of Japan’s “Gross National Cool” because of the country’s gift for absorbing the influences of a globalized culture and influencing it in turn.

Without this capacity, Japan could not have reinvented itself so brilliantly after total defeat in war. It would not have been so hospitable to foreign influences, starting with baseball, jazz, rock and liberal democracy.

Of course this paradoxical society has always confounded outsiders. Seen in the early 1980s as potentially dominating the world, Japan, not long after, was widely thought of as broken. With Japan, it seems, there is always a whiplash in perceptions. It poses a special problem for prognosticators, optimistic and pessimistic alike.

And so far, Japan’s political and corporate leaders have not risen to this crisis — witness the impatience of its own people and the rest of the world over the flaws in the official information about conditions at the Fukushima Daiichi reactors.

But political and social change come from below and not just from above. The spontaneous forms of solidarity and inventiveness that Japan’s triple tragedy has called forth suggest a society that has lost neither its resourcefulness nor its organizational gifts. Looking out that window more than a decade ago, I found it hard to bet against Japan. I still do.

ejdionne@washpost.com

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While the world has been transfixed with Japan, Europe has been struggling to avoid another financial crisis. On any Richter scale of economic threats, this may ultimately matter more than Japan’s grim tragedy. One reason is size. Europe represents about 20 percent of the world economy; Japan’s share is about 6 percent. Another is that Japan may recover faster than is now imagined; that happened after the 1995 Kobe earthquake. It’s hard to discuss the “world economic crisis” in the past tense as long as Europe’s debt problem festers — and it does.

Just last week, European leaders were putting the finishing touches on a plan to enlarge a bailout fund from an effective size of roughly 250 billion euros (about $350 billion) to 440 billion euros ($615 billion) and eventually to 500 billion euros ($700 billion). By lending to stricken debtor nations, the fund would aim to prevent them from defaulting on their government bonds, which could have ruinous repercussions. Banks could suffer huge losses in their bond portfolios; investors could panic and dump all European bonds; Europe and the world could relapse into recession.

Unfortunately, the odds of success are no better than 50-50.

Europe must do something. Greece and Ireland are already in receivership. Private investors won’t buy their bonds at reasonable rates. There are worries about Portugal and Spain; Moody’s recently downgraded both, though Spain’s rating is still high. The trouble is that the sponsors of the bailout fund are themselves big debtors. In 2010, Italy’s debt burden (the ratio of its government debt to its economy, or gross domestic product) was 131 percent, reports the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development; that exceeded Spain’s debt ratio of 72 percent. Debt ratios were high even for France (92 percent) and Germany (80 percent).

As these numbers suggest, there’s no automatic threshold beyond which private investors refuse to buy a country’s debt. Germany and France are considered sound investments, deserving low interest rates, because their economies are judged to be strong. But investor perceptions and confidence can dissolve in a flash. If private markets lost faith in, say, Italy or Belgium, even the enlarged bailout fund probably wouldn’t be big enough to rescue them. The whole scheme is debtors lending to debtors. It could collapse if investors conclude it’s unworkable, dump bonds and demand higher interest rates.

What would happen then is anyone’s guess. Would defaults occur? Would a banking crisis follow? Would some countries abandon the euro? (This sounds simple; in practice, it would be hugely complex. A country would have to convert all its money into a new national currency. It would be legally impossible to switch some debts from euros. The country would probably have to impose capital controls — restrictions on money entering or leaving the country.) Would the European Central Bank — the continent’s Fed — buy vast amounts of government bonds? Would the International Monetary Fund organize a bailout, financed heavily by China, to rescue Europe?

Europe has arrived at this dismal juncture driven by three forces: (a) large welfare states that were too often financed with debt; (b) the financial crisis that led to recession and has pushed some countries (Ireland, Spain) to aid their banks; (c) the perverse side effects of the single currency, the euro.

The euro’s role is especially ironic. Adopted in 1999 — and now used by 17 nations — the euro was intended to promote prosperity and political unity. Countries could enjoy similarly low interest rates and the convenience of common money. It seemed to work for a while. But low interest rates in Greece, Spain and Ireland encouraged unsustainable booms or housing bubbles that, when burst, aggravated their recessions and budget deficits. Now unity has turned to discord. Countries that back the debt bailout — particularly Germany — resent the possible costs; countries being bailed out resent the harsh austerity that’s imposed as a condition of aid.

There is a fragile debtor-creditor consensus that could crumble, posing yet another danger to economic recovery. Already, unemployment rates in Greece and Ireland hover around 13 percent. How much budget stringency (spending cuts, tax increases) will countries accept before social unrest or national pride cause politicians to say “enough”? Even European countries not facing an immediate debt problem need to reduce budget deficits to retain market confidence. All confront a common dilemma. Too much austerity too quickly could create a recession, widening deficits. Too little austerity too slowly could unnerve investors, raising interest rates and deficits.

It’s understandable that the human suffering, physical destruction and nuclear hazards in Japan compel our attention. But we ought to remember that a greater menace to global stability and prosperity lies halfway around the world.

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ST. PAUL, Minn. — Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty pressed toward a White House campaign Monday by formally announcing an exploratory committee with a call for backers to help him “take back our government.”

The Associated Press – FILE – In this March 7, 2011 file photo, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty speaks in Waukee, Iowa. Pawlenty, struggling for name recognition against better-known Republicans eying the presidency, told supporters on Monday that he will take the first formal step toward seeking the nomination, The Associated Press has learned. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)

“At a young age, I saw up close the face of challenge, the face of hardship and the face of job loss,” the Republican said in a two-minute video message designed to appeal to tea party activists and GOP rank and file facing economic insecurity.

“Over the last year I’ve traveled to nearly every state in the country and I know many Americans are feeling that way today. I know that feeling. I lived it. But there is a brighter future for America.”

The optimistic note harkened to another upbeat politician: President Barack Obama, who ran on the message of hope and change in 2008.

Pawlenty’s announcement of the exploratory committee almost certainly will lead to a full-blown candidacy for the GOP nomination in a field that has been slow to form. The winner would face the daunting task of unseating an incumbent president.

“We, the people of the United States, will take back our government. This is our country. Our founding fathers created it,” Pawlenty said in the Hollywood-style video that featured a soaring soundtrack. It was posted on his Facebook page Monday afternoon.

“Americans embraced it. Ronald Reagan personified it. And Lincoln stood courageously to protect it. That’s why today, I’m announcing the formation of an exploratory committee to run for president of the United States. Join the team and together we’ll restore America.”

It was the first definitive statement from a potential 2012 candidate on his or her White House campaign and Pawlenty said the exploratory phase wouldn’t last long.

“We’re not going to draw this out for a long period of time and I think the formal announcement or fuller announcement will come relatively soon,” Pawlenty told Fox News Channel in a primetime interview. “It’s not going to be six months from now. It will be sooner than that.”

The Republican presidential field has been slow to form compared to past election cycles as familiar names such as Sarah Palin mull bids and other potential hopefuls like Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich work behind the scenes on their candidacies. The harsh media spotlight and the expense of a full-scale campaign operation deterred Republicans from early announcements in the expected race against Obama, who is certain to raise hundreds of millions of dollars.

“At this point, the clock is ticking. They’ve got less than a year,” said Mo Elleithee, a Democratic strategist who is a veteran of presidential primaries.

“The first votes are going to be cast in 10 months and it’s a lot of work to build an organization in Iowa and raise the money to start to develop your message. Ten months isn’t that much time.”

The first Republican presidential debate is just a few weeks away on May 2 in California.

Pawlenty, a conservative Republican who ran a Democratic-leaning state for two terms, has methodically moved toward a national campaign since announcing in 2009 that he wouldn’t seek a third term. Since then, he stepped up his travel to early contest states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, recruited Republican aides with presidential campaign experience, and courted GOP donors.

Pawlenty’s advisers are banking on a strong showing in Iowa to propel him through other critical primary states. He has made near monthly visits to Iowa since last summer and is due there the first two days of April. His next New Hampshire stop is scheduled for April 15, when he’ll take part in a tea party-sponsored tax day rally.

Pawlenty has made overtures to the fiscal conservatives and tea partyers whose top concerns are Washington spending and the national debt, as well as the social conservatives who oppose abortion and gay rights and hold sway in the leadoff Iowa caucuses. His efforts to appeal to a broad swath of the Republican Party signal that he’s trying to cast himself as a candidate who every party member can back.

In his Fox News Channel interview, Pawlenty sought to appeal to the segment of his party that places a premium on national security. He blasted Libyan ruler Moammar Gadhafi as a “confirmed terrorist who has the blood of our fellow citizens from America on his hands; in my view, he’s a psychopath.”

He said a no-fly zone, now in place, implemented earlier would have given rebels there a chance to overthrow Gadhafi. He said indecisive moves toward a no-fly zone led to a missed opportunity.

Pawlenty’s biggest hurdle to the nomination may be that he’s far less well-known nationally than other Republicans who are expected to run. A Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted earlier this month found roughly six in 10 voters had no opinion of Pawlenty.

His limited national profile — despite being on GOP nominee John McCain’s short list for vice president in 2008 — may make it difficult to raise the millions of dollars needed to wage a credible campaign and build a strong operation.

All-but-declared candidates have started to assemble advisers and staff, yet aren’t rushing into the fray. Gingrich has announced he is weighing a run but hasn’t yet declared. Romney advisers say not to expect his announcement this month. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour says he will wait until his state legislature completes its work in April.

Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman’s term as the United States’ ambassador to China ends at the end of April and his supporters are planning a May announcement.

Others, such as former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, are calling activists in the early nominating states but have not yet made a public declaration.

Pawlenty, 50, was raised in a Minnesota meatpacking town, the son of a truck-driving father and a mother who died of cancer when he was a teen. He worked in a grocery to pay his way through college.

He began his political career on a suburban planning commission and the Eagan city council. He spent 10 years in the Minnesota House, serving as majority leader before becoming governor in 2002.

Pawlenty styled himself as a no-new-taxes governor, swatting down bill after bill that boosted state taxes. He didn’t take as hard a line on fees, and he consented to a 75-cent-per-pack “health impact fee” on cigarettes to end a partial government shutdown one year.

He signed legislation further restricting abortions and making concealed weapons permits more widely available, but social issues were hardly a centerpiece of his tenure. Pawlenty has added emphasis to his record on such issues as he moved toward a presidential run. His autobiography, released in January, was heavy on Bible references and traced his shift from Catholicism to evangelicalism.

Pawlenty still fits in the occasional pickup hockey game, as he did in New Hampshire recently while wearing a “T-Paw 12” jersey. He has a couple of marathon finishes, training alongside his wife, Mary. The couple has two teenage daughters.

___

Elliott reported from Washington.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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The Federal Communications Commission should require sponsors of political advertising to disclose their biggest financial backers to the public, according to a petition to be filed Tuesday by a public-interest law firm.

The Media Access Project, which advocates on behalf of consumers in telecommunications issues, argues that the FCC has interpreted federal law too narrowly when it comes to disclosures for political ads.

Under current rules, some of which date back to the 1940s, the FCC requires disclosure only for the group claiming responsibility for the ad, no matter how it paid for it.

But Andrew Schwartzman, the media project’s senior vice president and policy director, says the Communications Act of 1934 and subsequent legislation anticipates a much broader standard: disclosure of those actually paying for the message.

Schwartzman’s petition asks the FCC to revise its rules to require groups to disclose financial backers who contribute more than 10 percent of their budgets as part of public documents filed with broadcast stations. It would also require on-air disclosures for donors who provide more than 25 percent of a television commercial’s budget.

“The statutory objective of informing the electorate about who is the ‘true’ sponsor of political messages is not being met,” Schwartzman writes in the media project’s petition. “…Existing campaign finance and IRS regulations allow organizations which are often hollow shells for one or a few organizations or individuals to purchase commercials without identifying the source of their funding.”

The petition is the latest volley in the ongoing battle over the future of campaign-finance regulations, which have been significantly curtailed by recent court rulings, including a decision by the Supreme Court allowing unfettered spending by corporations.

The White House and congressional Democrats failed in attempts last year to impose broader disclosure requirements on outside advocacy groups, many of which are able to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money without revealing any donors.

The FCC is currently split 3-to-2 in favor of Democrats, including Chairman Julius Genachowski. Schwartzman said he doesn’t know whether any of the FCC’s members or the White House will look favorably on the proposal.

“I would argue it’s a relatively modest change in existing practices,” he said. “I have no idea what their view will be.”

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