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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.

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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.”

eggend@washpost.com

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(Harry Hamburg – AP)

“This is a very special month for us because one year ago we passed the historic Affordable Health Care Act, which has made a difference in the lives of the American people.”

— House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)

House Democrats held a birthday party last week for passage of the health-care law. Just as we looked at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s floor speech noting the milestone, we will now examine some of the claims made by Democrats.

McConnell framed his speech in negative terms, citing data to back up his language. Both Democrats and Republicans can pick and choose numbers and studies to make their case, but we found that generally McConnell did not exaggerate or use bogus figures. In fact, he correctly described a Congressional Budget Office analysis suggesting a potential reduction in employment of 800,000 jobs (technically, one-half of 1 percent of household employment in 2021) that other Republicans have misrepresented.

By contrast, House Democrats appear to show little hesitation about repeating claims that previously have found to be false or exaggerated. So let’s take a tour through the numbers.

“It’s about jobs. Does it create jobs? Health insurance reform creates 4 million jobs, and in the last 12 months the private sector has added 1.5 million new jobs, and of that a quarter of a million were in the health insurance industry.”

— Pelosi

Here, Pelosi is repeating a talking point from the health-care debate. The 4 million figure comes from a report by the Center for American Progress, a liberal-leaning group, which estimated that universal health care would add 250,000 to 400,000 jobs a year. Pelosi took the top end of the range and then multiplied it by 10, a numerical sleight-of-hand that Polifact last year labeled “half true.”

A Pelosi spokesman noted she has been using this statistic for 14 months now, but we frown on the reuse of statistics previously found to be suspect.

In this case, since the bill has passed, the Congressional Budget Office has done its own analysis (the one McConnell cited) that cast some doubt on the CAP analysis, written before the bill was passed into law. Presumably, members of Congress should pay more attention to estimates by their own budget agency than think tanks that promote their agenda. Repeating this dubious statistic is worth at least a Pinocchio or two. (About our rating scale)

The second half of her statement comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but it doesn’t really mean anything. Health-care jobs have long been an important part of new private-sector jobs, so 260,000 being created in the last 12 months is not out of the ordinary. For example, BLS figures show that in 2007, there were 381,000 health care jobs created; in 2006, 324,000 jobs; and in 2005, 271,000 jobs. The CAP study was not making any prediction about health-care jobs, but all jobs, so it is unclear what point Pelosi is making with this statistic.

 “It’s about reducing the deficit. Again, it reduces the deficit more than $1 trillion over the life of the bill.”

— Pelosi

This is another bogus statistic for which we have previously awarded three Pinocchios.

The CBO estimated $143 billion in deficit reduction over 10 years in the health-care law, but about $19 billion of it came from unrelated items. As we have noted, the remaining $124 billion was based on a number of assumptions that called that estimate into question.

But Pelosi claims more than $1 trillion in deficit reduction by using a 20-year figure that is particularly absurd.

 As we wrote in January: “There are too many uncertainties to be precise, and the CBO itself merely offered a tentative guess of a “broad range of around one-half percent of GDP,” with significant caveats. Democrats simply took that percentage, multiplied it against the predicted size of the GDP 20 years from now (itself a pretty fuzzy figure) and, presto, they had a number. But it’s a fairly meaningless one.”

 “In fact, when you look at the percentage of employers with 10 employees or less that offer health care, it rose from 46 percent in 2009, and it went up to 59 percent in 2010, at the end of last year, an incredible increase that we have. That shows that it is working.”

— Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Tex.)

Another three-Pinocchio statistic! We also picked this apart in January so we are surprised this golden oldie is still in use by Democrats.

The statistic comes from a Kaiser Family Foundation survey that was largely conducted before the health care bill was passed, so it is pretty irrelevant. Moreover, the study said the main reason for the shift was not because more companies were offering health insurance but because more that did not were going out of business.

 Gary Claxton, the main author of the report, also told us that the data set for small firms — the one Cuellar cited — was too tiny to reach any conclusions.

So, rather than showing that the health care law is “working,” the survey that is the source of this statistic does not show that at all.

 Jose Borjon, a spokesman for Cuellar, said in an e-mail: “Thank you for bringing your January 19, 2011, Washington Post Fact Checker article to our attention.  Congressman Cuellar based his quote from a December 27, 2010, Los Angeles Times story by Noam Levey. Thank you for bringing to light the correct characterization of the Kaiser employer survey. Nevertheless, stories across the country, from North Carolina to Kansas, demonstrate that small businesses are increasingly taking advantage of the small business tax credit to provide health care to their employees.”

The Times article does provide anecdotal evidence that health insurance companies are aggressively marketing a small-business tax credit in the law to sign up new customers. Still, Democrats need to drop this ”fact” from their talking points.

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Wednesday is the first birthday of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the law better known as health-care reform. Cake, I imagine, will not be served. As much as Democrats are trying to leverage the milestone to sell the public on the legislation’s many virtues, the reality is that it has been a tough year.

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At best, public support for the law is mixed and contradictory. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey released last week was typical: A slight plurality had an unfavorable impression of it, but a slight majority opposed efforts to repeal it or replace it with a Republican-backed alternative. It brings to mind an old Woody Allen joke about a restaurant where the food is terrible and the portions are too small. Americans don’t think they like the Affordable Care Act, but they don’t want to be without it or left with whatever Republicans want to put in its place.

For most Americans, the dominant emotion is confusion. According to the Kaiser poll, “confused” outranks “angry,” “anxious” and “enthusiastic” as a descriptor. At 53 percent, it commands an easy majority — and I’d guess that’s a low estimate.

So this is my birthday present to the legislation, and those who are befuddled by it: some clarity on what it does, and how it does it.

The health-care reform law is, without a doubt, among the most consequential pieces of social policy passed since the Great Society. But it’s also a lot more incremental than many people realize. More modest, by far, than the health-care overhauls proposed by Presidents Clinton, Nixon, Johnson and Truman.

In 2019, once the law has been fully implemented for five years, it is expected to cover about two-thirds of the uninsured, to cost about 4 percent of what the health-care system spends in any given year and to cut the federal deficit by less than 1 percent. If you obtain insurance from your employer, Medicare, Medicaid or the veterans system — and that describes most Americans — you probably won’t notice the legislation at all.

Nevertheless, the Affordable Care Act, once it kicks in fully in 2014, is expected to do four things: provide coverage; remake a small slice of the private insurance market; pay for itself; and try to control costs. Let’s take them in order.

The law has two main mechanisms for covering people: Medicaid — which is a government insurance program that focuses on the poor — and subsidies to help people afford private insurance. The split is expected to be almost even: Of the 32 million people the law is expected to cover by 2019, 16 million will be on Medicaid and the rest covered by private insurance.

The problem with subsidizing insurance is that the sick rush to sign up and the insurers refuse to cover them. The law escapes this conundrum by telling people who can afford insurance that they have to buy it or face a small fine (the dreaded individual mandate) and by telling insurers that they can’t discriminate based on preexisting conditions. That is to say, healthy people can no longer say no until they get sick and insurers can no longer say yes only when applicants are healthy.

These transactions will happen on the new “exchanges” — a place that will, in effect, be a Web site where people can compare plans and choose the one that will serve them best. But behind the pleasing exterior (you can see it at HealthCare.gov), the exchanges offer another layer of consumer protection: Just as Amazon.com would stop carrying a toaster that routinely exploded when customers plugged it in, if an insurer repeatedly misbehaves, regulators can kick it out of the exchange.

All this will cost money — and in a system that’s already overpriced. Which brings us to offsets and cost controls. It’s important to know the difference: Offsets are the policies that cover the law’s costs. They’re concrete, simple reforms — cutting this much, taxing that much — and as long as we are willing to implement them, they are likely to work. Controls are the policies that try to rein in health-care spending. They’re ambitious attempts to change the way doctors are paid, insurance is bought and Medicare is reformed. If they work, they will, in the long run, save an enormous amount of money — much more than the offsets.

The big offsets in the health-care law slow payment increases to doctors who participate in Medicare ($240 billion), cut payments to private insurers that participate in Medicare but cost more than the basic Medicare program does ($140 billion), add a new tax on high-income beneficiaries of Medicare ($210 billion) and on very expensive health-care plans ($20 billion, although much more than that between 2020 and 2029), and so on. All in all, the legislation is expected to save or raise about $100 billion more than it spends in the first 10 years.

The cost controls will occur over a longer period and are more speculative. Medicare, for instance, is going to experiment with paying hospitals a flat sum for all successful care associated with a particular condition. This will mean that doctors make more money when they do less and are successful at it, rather than making more for doing more, as is the case now. The tax on expensive health insurance plans is meant to drive people — and employers — to seek plans that better control costs.

The Independent Payment Advisory Board is a group of stakeholders and experts charged with helping Medicare control costs and empowered to make changes to the system even if Congress is too paralyzed or distracted to act. It will be fed ideas by the new Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, which will test ways to improve care and cut expenses. The exchanges will make it easier to comparison-shop, and the subsidies are linked to the lowest-priced plans in the exchanges to reward cost-efficient insurers. New information about what drugs and treatments work best and for whom will come from trials, and if combined with electronic-medical records, could help doctors make more cost-effective decisions.

Is it a perfect piece of legislation? Not even close. Will everything work as expected? Almost certainly not. But for all its flaws, it’s a good law, which is why Republicans have had so much trouble coming up with state plans that could cover more people at a lower cost. And it’s worth trying.

So happy birthday, Affordable Care Act. Here’s to many more.

kleine@washpost.com

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Both chambers are in recess this week, with the Senate set to return on March 28 and the House due to come back on March 29. Still, with the U.S. involvement in the crisis in Libya as well as continuing negotiations over funding the government past April 8, there will be plenty to keep an eye on. Here’s a look at what’s happening this week:

Monday

11:15 a.m.: Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.) speaks at an event on missile defense hosted by the Missile Defense Agency and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) addresses the conference at 3:45 p.m.

Noon: Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) headlines a Heritage Foundation event on repealing the national health-care law.

12:45 p.m.: Vice President Biden, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Delaware Gov. Jack Markell (D), Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Vice President of the National Education Association Lily Eskelsen participate in a Race to the Top event in Wilmington, Del.

1 p.m.: The Cato Institute holds a conference on “The New Health Care Law: What a Difference a Year Makes.”

2 p.m.: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce holds a conference call to discuss “the challenges facing businesses as a result of the new Affordable Care Act.”

5 p.m.: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) delivers remarks on the economy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

7 p.m.: Former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) participates in a “veterans campaign speaker series event” at George Washington University.

Tuesday

7:30 a.m.: Former Florida governor Jeb Bush (R) delivers the keynote address at an education summit at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel.

Noon: The Heritage Foundation holds a discussion on the national health-care law’s one-year anniversary.

2:30 p.m.: The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) holds a discussion on the South Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and the Trade Agenda.

4 p.m.: The Cato Institute holds a forum on “A Government Thumb on the Election Scale?”

Wednesday

7:30 a.m.: Government Executive Media Group holds a briefing at the National Press Club on “Budget Battles: Impact on the Federal Workforce.”

Noon: The Woodrow Wilson Center holds a screening of “The Fence,” a documentary about the U.S. border fence with Mexico.

4 p.m.: Former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm (D) and former senator John Warner (R-Va.) discuss clean energy at a Pew Charitable Trusts event.

Thursday

Noon: Former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell (D) speaks at a Local Initiatives Support Corporation event at the J.W. Marriott. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and former Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) address participants at 5:45 p.m.

9 a.m.: The American Enterprise Institute holds an event on the national health-care law.

2 p.m.: The U.S. Census Bureau holds a news conference at the National Press Club on 2010 census news.

Friday

Noon: The Hudson Institute holds a discussion on “How Should the U.S. Respond to the Prospect of Islamist Governments?”

12:30 p.m.: Former chancellor of D.C. Public Schools Michelle Rhee speaks at a Local Initiatives Support Corporation event at the J.W. Marriott.

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Civil liberties advocates opposed to the government’s expanded wiretapping powers can fight another day after an appellate court on Monday reinstated a lawsuit challenging an eavesdropping law passed by Congress three years ago.

The decision could put the Obama administration in the uncomfortable position of having to argue in support of broad executive authority to conduct surveillance operations – a position that President Obama, as a presidential candidate, had once opposed.

In the lawsuit, one of the few remaining on the issue, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups charged that the expanded surveillance powers granted by Congress in 2008 were unconstitutional and illegal.

A district judge in Manhattan had thrown out the lawsuit because he said that the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate they were actually spied upon and did not have legal standing to sue. But the Second Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, allowing the lawsuit on Monday to move forward.

It found that the groups challenging the wiretapping law, including lawyers and journalists communicating with people overseas who might fall under terrorism investigations, had a reasonable fear that their international calls and e-mails would be monitored by the government.

While the appeals court did not rule on the merits of the case, the groups bringing the case said they were glad to be able to bring the legal substance of their challenge in court.

“I have always thought that we had a very strong argument,” said Jameel Jaffer, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union. “The new law allows the government to engage in dragnet surveillance of Americans’ communication, and it makes the fourth amendment altogether irrelevant.”

The 2008 law passed by Congress, known as the FISA Amendments Act, followed a furious debate over the legality of then-President Bush’s secret eavesdropping program, and it gave intelligence agencies wide leeway to monitor international communications without direct court oversight.

Mr. Obama, then an Illinois senator and Democratic presidential candidate, opposed the broadening of executive power, but he angered some liberal supporters by reversing his position and voting for the measure.

The Justice Department, which could seek a re-hearing in the Second Circuit to prevent the case from returning to the district court, had no comment on Monday.

While the federal agency under Mr. Obama has argued questions of legal standing in defending wiretapping lawsuits that began in the Bush administration, this would be the first time it has to argue the merits and legality of the executive branch’s spy powers, Mr. Jaffer noted. “It’ll be interesting to see what they do,” he said. “But I’m not that hopeful they’ll change their position.”

Ruling From the Second Circuit

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Doug Mills/The New York Times President Obama signed an electronic “white board” as he met with music students at a school in Arlington, Va.

2:22 p.m. | Updated President Obama called on Congress to revamp the “No Child Left Behind” education law by the time students start a new school year in September, urging lawmakers to “seize this education moment.”

Mr. Obama made the remarks on Monday at a school in Virginia, using the backdrop of a classroom to urge changes to a law that Democrats and Republicans agree is broken.

“I want every child in the country to head back to school in the fall knowing that their education is America’s priority,” the president said. “The goals of No Child Left Behind were the right goals. But what hasn’t worked is denying teachers, schools and states what they need to meet these goals.”

Mr. Obama last week met with lawmakers from both parties in an attempt to jump-start the debate over reauthorizing the law, known officially as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Enacted in 2002, it was one of President George W. Bush’s signature pieces of legislation.

But while both sides agree that the existing law needs and overhaul, there are differences over what needs to be done. Democrats have generally favored greater investment in schools while conservatives have pushed for more local control over decisions.

Unions have also complained about the president’s push for connecting teacher pay to judgments about classroom performance.

In his remarks, Mr. Obama called for changes to the education law that would push more control to local and state governments, improve the quality of testing, demand increased standards and increase accountability by principals.

In the face of an ongoing budget dispute with Republicans, Mr. Obama also said efforts to remake the law must be supported by the funding necessary to make it work.

“A budget that sacrifices our commitment to education would be a budget that’s sacrificing our country’s future. That would be a budget that sacrifices our children’s future. And I will not let it happen,” Mr. Obama said. “So yes, I’m determined to cut our deficits, but I refuse to do it by telling students here, who are so full of promise, that we’re not willing to invest in your future.”

UPDATE: Representative John Kline ,the chairman of the House education committee, said in a statement Monday that “the president’s remarks affirm the importance of fixing the nation’s broken education system. As we develop targeted, fiscally responsible reforms, the Committee on Education and the Workforce continues to work with school officials and state and local leaders to learn about the tools they need to prepare students for the future. We need to take the time to get this right – we cannot allow an arbitrary timeline to undermine quality reforms that encourage innovation, flexibility, and parental involvement.”

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