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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.

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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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(Cliff Owen/AP)
It’s the destiny of every first lady to write a book, it seems — and now, Michelle Obama. Through a just-announced deal with Random House’s Crown Publishing Group, Mrs. Obama will write a book about her South Lawn garden and her campaign to encourage Americans to eat more fresh, locally-grown food.

According to Crown, the first lady is not taking an advance for the book — due out April 2012 — and will donate all earnings to charity. The deal was engineered for her by Bob Barnett, the D.C. superlawyer who over the years has shepherded many of the books coming from White House figures or other top political players.

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Even as it nears a critical vote in Congress today, the compromise tax deal worked out by President Obama and Republicans on Capitol Hill has some new enemies.

Conservatives.

Last week, the agreement was assailed by liberals who accused the president of giving away the store by agreeing to a temporary extension of tax breaks and reductions in the estate tax, both of which will benefit the wealthy.

But with a critical procedural vote scheduled for Monday afternoon in the Senate, some Tea Party activists and other conservative pundits are attacking it from the other side.

A group called the Tea Party Patriots is circulating a petition accusing Republican lawmakers of cutting a bad backroom deal with the president that violates the principles that Tea Party candidates campaigned on in the midterm elections.

“’The Deal’ revives the death tax, an immoral ‘vampire tax’ that sucks the blood from the dead, ruins family businesses and double taxes savings that were accumulated over a lifetime,” the petition says. “‘The Deal’ spends billions and billions of dollars that the country does not have in order to prevent a tax hike that the country voted against.”

Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio host, said the tax deal “should not happen.” On his show Friday, Mr. Limbaugh blasted the Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill for giving in too much to Mr. Obama.

“The economic benefit here, if we do this deal, is going to be minimal,” Mr. Limbaugh said, insisting that Republicans should have fought for the permanent extension of the tax cuts rather than giving in to a temporary one. “Where is the Republican vision?”

Erik Erickson, the conservative blogger, wrote at Redstate.com that the “deal must now die.”

“It must now be opposed by Republicans,” Mr. Erickson wrote. “Released now in print, the legislation is loaded up with budget-busting pork of ridiculously absurd levels.”

Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, appears to agree with Mr. Limbaugh. In a Twitter message, she endorsed the position of Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, who has criticized the compromise.

The Twitter message from a conservative commentator said, “Thank you, @JimDeMint — DeMint comes out against tax deal, says G.O.P. must do better than this.”

And Charles Krauthammer, the conservative columnist for The Washington Post, wrote in his last column that Mr. Obama and the Democrats had gotten more than people realized in the deal.

“Obama is no fool,” Mr. Krauthammer wrote. “While getting Republicans to boost his own re-election chances, he gets them to make a mockery of their newfound, second-chance, post-Bush, Tea Party, this-time-we’re-serious persona of debt-averse fiscal responsibility.”

The Tea Party petition echoes many of the criticisms that disaffected liberals hurled at Mr. Obama after he took office and started negotiating with Congress to advance his agenda. Some of the accusations could easily have been written about Mr. Obama’s health care fight.

“This ‘backroom deal’ ignores those who voted for principled leadership on Election Day,” said Mark Meckler, the national coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots. “Americans demand transparency in the legislative process and policies that reflect fiscal responsibility — not secret negotiations and weak compromise.”

Will the carping from the right make a difference in the bill’s chances? That’s hard to imagine, given the louder chorus of praise for the compromise from Republican lawmakers who will vote as early as today.

But keeping your base satisfied is tough, as President Obama discovered during his first two years in office. And in the House, especially, it looks like Republicans will have to be quite united behind the legislation if many Democrats abandon the president.

Stay tuned for the voting.

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The tax cut deal between the White House and Congressional Republicans could hinge on a renewable energy grant program that some Democrats are fighting to include in the package.

The White House and Republican leaders have suggested that the deal is essentially final and that they have little willingness to renegotiate the terms.

But many Congressional Democrats are furious both about the prospect of continuing the Bush-era tax cuts, even on the highest incomes, and about the way they were cut out of the negotiations. House Democrats on Thursday voted to block the bill from getting a vote unless changes were made.

One change that Democrats are seeking is the extension of a Treasury grant program for renewable energy projects, which was first adopted in the 2009 economic stimulus bill. Supporters say the program has generated big growth in American clean energy industries. The program is set to expire on Dec. 31.

Three Democrats, Representatives Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, Mike Thompson of Califorina and Rush Holt of New Jersey, have scheduled a news conference on Thursday afternoon to push for the energy grant program.

They will also send a letter to House leaders, signed by 79 lawmakers who support this program.

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President Obama closed in on a deal with Congressional Republicans on Monday to extend the Bush-era tax cuts at all income levels for two years as part of a package that would extend jobless aid for long-term unemployed, cut payroll taxes for all workers for a year and take other steps to bolster the economy, an administration official said.

In announcing the preliminary deal, Mr. Obama said Democrats were holding firm against what he portrayed as Republican attempts to only grant tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.

“Make no mistake, allowing taxes to go up on all Americans would have raised taxes by $3,000 for a typical American family and that could cost our economy well over a million jobs,” Mr. Obama said at the White House.

The package would cost about $900 billion over the next two years. The deal includes reducing the 6.2 percent Social Security payroll tax on employees by two percentage points for a year, putting more money in the paychecks of workers. That tax cut would replace the central tax break for middle and low-income Americans included in last year’s economic stimulus measure, White House officials said.

It also includes continuation of a college-tuition tax credit for some families, an expansion of the earned income tax credit and a provision to allow businesses to write off the cost of certain equipment purchases.

The deal, which is not yet finalized, would include a 13-month extension of jobless aid for the long-term unemployed. Benefits have already started to run out for some people, and as many as 7 million people would potentially lose assistance within the next year, administration officials said.

Administration officials sought to cast the deal in a positive light, saying many of the new provisions would do more to accelerate the economic recovery than the tax cuts at high income levels.

But Congressional Democrats have expressed increasing anger that the payroll tax cut and the jobless aide, which Mr. Obama demanded in exchange for continuing the Bush-era tax rates for the highest-income Americans, were not enough in return for such a big concession.

The payroll tax cut would put about $120 billion back in the pockets of workers and the unemployment benefits would cost about $60 billion, officials said. Continuing the lowered tax rates for the highest-earners, by contrast, would cost the government $700 billion in lost revenue over the next 10 years, according to budget analysts.

The White House was also said to have agreed to Republican demands on the estate tax that would result in an exemption of $5 million per person and a maximum rate of 35 percent. Some Democratic aides said that concession alone was reason enough for Democratic lawmakers to oppose the deal when it comes up for votes in the House and Senate.

Some Democrats expressed wariness about the emerging deal. But it was clear that Republicans were happier with the results.

“Nothing has been finalized yet,” Senator John Barasso, Republican of Wyoming said in a television interview. Still he said, “I am encouraging Democrats to get on board.” He added, “They good news is it doesn’t raise taxes on anyone in this country.”

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From Today’s Times:

– The tentative deal between President Obama and congressional Republicans includes keeping the Bush-era tax cuts at all income levels for two years, an extension of jobless aid to the unemployed and a cut in payroll taxes for workers for a year, The Times’s David Herszenhorn and Jackie Calmes report.

– Messy. Combustible. Painful. The Times’s Peter Baker paints the picture of what bipartisanship looks like for the president after last month’s “shellacking.”

– Mr. Obama has urged his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, to cast a more critical eye on North Korea after a series of provocations from Pyongyang, The Times’s Mark Landler reports.

– The day in WikiLeaks: America tries to stop arms buildups in some of the world’s more tense places, while three Baltic states — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — started lobbying for a formal defense plan after fighting sparked up between Russia and Georgia a couple of years back.

– With House Republicans on the cusp of selecting a new Appropriations Committee chairman, The Times’s Carl Hulse reports that the push to get the panel to embrace budget cutting could be the boldest part of Representative John A. Boehner’s plan to change how the House operates.

– Defenders of Proposition 8 — California’s ban on same-sex marriage — faced some skepticism from judges on a federal appellate panel, The Times’s Jesse McKinley reports.

From Around the Web:

– A Tea Party group may have wanted her to, but Sarah Palin does not appear to be interested in running to be chair of the Republican National Committee, ABC News reports.

– The New Yorker has an extensive profile of Mr. Boehner, the soon-to-be speaker, finding the fact that he is not the best known Republican in the land could work to his advantage.

– National Journal sees the possibility of the president gaining some 2011 momentum from the current lame-duck session of Congress.

– Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, wants some answers from the Fed following last week’s release of details on transactions during the financial crisis, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Washington Daybook:

– The president is expected to receive credentials from ambassadors recently posted to Washington at a White House ceremony.

– In the wake of the announcement of the tax deal, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who spent 36 years in the Senate, is set to head up to Capitol Hill to attend a lunch with that chamber’s Democrats.

– Arne Duncan, the education secretary, is scheduled to discuss the results of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s PISA test, which was given to students around the world. (As The Times’s Sam Dillon reports, students from Shanghai cleaned up on the test.)

– Nancy Pelosi, the current House speaker, is expected to light the Capitol Christmas tree.

– Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is slated to speak at the national conference for his department’s Bureau of Justice Assistance.

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