At a Senate Rules Committee hearing Wednesday on the influence of so-called “dark money” groups, nonprofits that don’t have to report their donors for election spending, Sen. Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said Democrats would soon bring the amendment up for a vote.

The amendment, introduced last year by , a New Mexico Democrat, would allow Congress to limit contributions and spending by campaigns, as well as by super PACs and dark money groups. States would be allowed to pass their own regulations.

The amendment could be the only way to reverse the impact of Supreme Court decisions that have struck down some limits on contributions by corporations, unions, nonprofits and individuals to both outside groups and, more recently, to political parties.

鈥�”It’s now crystal clear to me that an amendment to the Constitution is necessary to allow meaningful campaign finance rules,” Udall said on Wednesday.

The amendment has little chance of passing, however, as it needs the support of 67 senators. Republicans are unlikely to vote for it. Many conservatives see limits on campaign finance as limits on free speech. Conservatives also have benefited more from the gusher of outside money so far.

Predictably, the hearing on Wednesday reinforced the sharp divisions between Republicans and Democrats on campaign finance.

鈥婼chumer, Udall and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Democrats on the committee who were at the hearing, called for new campaign finance restrictions. And Sen. Angus King, the Maine independent who led the hearing and who often votes with Democrats, was particularly critical of dark money groups, the social welfare nonprofits and trade associations that can spend money on elections without disclosing their donors.

“In Maine, we have town meetings every spring,” King said. “Nobody’s allowed to go to a Maine town meeting with a bag over their head.”

But Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, the ranking Republican on the committee, spoke out against new regulations as restrictions on free speech, pointing to a plaque he had brought displaying the text of the First Amendment.

“Let’s stop this fool’s errand of speech regulation,” he said.

At issue isn’t simply speech 鈥� it’s whether who’s behind that speech should be identified. Disclosure is something that many courts have said is paramount. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, for example, said that corporations, unions and nonprofits could spend unlimited money on outside election ads. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said the influx of that money would not corrupt elections because of laws requiring outside groups to disclose their donors.

have written extensively, however, about the many ways groups have used to avoid this kind of transparency. In 2012 alone, social welfare nonprofits and trade associations dumped more than $310 million into the election. Who are the donors? Who knows?

As the Center for Responsive Politics reported Wednesday, the is so far shaping up to involve more dark money than any election to date. And Democrats are with Republicans, who have typically spent much more through dark money groups.

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, the other Republican who attended the hearing Wednesday, addressed the disclosure issue, at least partly. He called for allowing unlimited contributions to candidates followed by immediate disclosure of who gave the money. But Cruz did not say whether he also supported such disclosures by dark money groups.

A slate of campaign finance experts testified before the committee, including former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the dissenting opinion in the Citizens United case before his retirement in 2010 and recently authored a book proposing a constitutional amendment to limit political spending.

In an interview with ProPublica after the hearing, King said he imagined Democrats would try to bring Udall’s amendment to the floor this summer but acknowledged that passing it would be difficult. He said he is more focused on passing legislation to require more campaign finance disclosure.

“I know there are Republicans who are interested in this issue and have expressed it,” he said.

He declined, however, to name them.

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The in question, buried near the end of a 584-page transportation funding bill, also required some modest action: That the Federal Emergency Management Agency use “the best available climate science” to figure out how the flood insurance program it administers should handle rising seas.

FEMA’s first step was supposed to be to set up an advisory body, the Technical Mapping Advisory Council, that would make recommendations on how the agency could take the effects of climate change into account in its flood insurance maps.

But more than a year later, FEMA hasn’t named a single member to the council. Without any members, it has been unable to meet or make any recommendations. In July, the council missed a deadline set out in the law for submitting written recommendations for how the flood insurance program might deal with future risks related to climate change.

FEMA had developed a charter for the council by the end of August and was in the process of finalizing letters to solicit council members, according to the agency. Dan Watson, the FEMA press secretary, said he was unable to provide more up-to-date information because much of the agency’s staff has been furloughed under the government shutdown.

Few areas of the federal government are more directly affected by climate change than the flood insurance program and its maps, which determine the premiums that 5.6 million American households pay for flood insurance. The program fell deeply into the red after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Sandy last year. It’s currently $25 billion in debt.

Many of the maps and therefore don’t reflect the rise in sea levels since the time they were drawn.

FEMA released in June estimating that sea levels will rise an average of four feet by 2100, increasing the portion of the country at high risk of flooding by up to 45 percent. The number of Americans who live in those areas could double by the century’s end, according to the report.

The law requires the council to outline steps for improving the “accuracy, general quality, ease of use, and distribution and dissemination” of the maps. Josh Saks, legislative director for the National Wildlife Federation, which pushed for the legislation, said that might include figuring out how to better take into account the way new development along a river, say, worsens flooding for those who live downstream.

Jimi Grande, the senior vice president for federal and political affairs for the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, a lobbying group, said the council would “absolutely” help make the flood maps more accurate.

“We need to know what the risks are to have an intelligent conversation as a country” about development in areas that are vulnerable to flooding, he said.

The measure was part of a broader package of reforms to the National Flood Insurance Program that phased out many of the government subsidies that had kept flood insurance premiums artificially cheap for many homeowners. The full-risk rates for many policyholders on Oct. 1, despite vocal protests against them.

An operational mapping advisory council wouldn’t fix everything that’s wrong with the flood insurance program. As , some of the maps FEMA has issued in recent years have been based on outdated, inaccurate data, giving homeowners a misleading impression of flood risk and, in some cases, forcing them to buy insurance when they were not at great risk of flooding.

Taking climate change into account when setting flood insurance rates is also a complex task.

“That’s why we put the council in charge,” said Saks, from the National Wildlife Federation. “I can read the science and say storms are happening more often, and I can read the numbers and see that sea-level rise is happening. But I’m not an actuary, and I don’t know how you then translate that to” setting insurance rates.

The risk-modeling companies that private insurers rely on have struggled to take climate change into account in their models, but they are making progress.

“I wouldn’t be too surprised if within the next five years we could credibly start to incorporate climate change into aspects of the modeling,” said David F. Smith, the vice president of the model development group at Eqecat, a risk-modeling firm.

Michael B. Gerrard, director of the Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, said he wasn’t surprised FEMA had been slow in setting up the council.

“It’s the rule, rather than the exception, that federal agencies miss the rule-making deadlines” set out in laws, he said. “Often they have to be sued to get back on schedule.”

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But Congress from portions of a number of federal laws, including provisions that protect workers in the private sector but don’t apply to the legislative branch’s approximately 30,000 employees.

Here’s our rundown of measures Congress exempts itself from:

• Whistleblower Protections: Congress passed the Whistleblower Protection Act in 1989, which protects workers in the executive branch from retaliation for reporting waste, mismanagement or lawbreaking. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act gives similar protections to private-sectors workers. But legislative-branch workers 鈥� a category that includes congressional staffers as well as employees of the Library of Congress, the Architect of the Capitol and other offices 鈥攄on’t get the same protections.
• Subpoenas for Health and Safety Probes:  The Occupational Health and Safety Act empowers the U.S. Department of Labor to investigate health and safety violations in private-sector workplaces. If an employer doesn’t cooperate, the agency can subpoena the records it needs. The Office of Compliance, the independent agency that investigates such violations in the legislative branch, doesn’t have the power to issue those subpoenas.
• Keeping Workplace Records: A number of workplace-rights laws 鈥� the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act and others 鈥� require employers to retain personnel records for a certain period of time. But as a on the congressional workplace notes, “Congress has exempted itself from all of these requirements.” Congress is also exempt from keeping records of injuries and illness the way private-sector employers are.
• Prosecution for Retaliating Against Employees: If a private-sector employer retaliates against a worker for reporting health or safety hazards, the Department of Labor can investigate and, if necessary, sue the employer. Congress’ Office of Compliance doesn’t have that power 鈥� legislative-branch employees must file suit personally and pay their own legal fees.
• Posting Notices of Workers’ Rights: Workplace-rights laws require employers to post notices of those rights, which often appear in office lunchrooms. Congress is exempt from this requirement, though this has little real-world impact. The Office of Compliance sends legislative employees the same information each year, formatted “in a manner suitable for posting.”
• Anti-Discrimination and Anti-Retaliation Training: The No Fear Act requires agencies in the executive branch to provide such training to employees, but the legislative branch is exempt.
• The Freedom of Information Act: The public can request information from federal agencies, but Congress, the federal courts and some parts of the Executive Office of the President are exempt.

In addition to sparing itself from complying with measures it has made mandatory for others, Congress is violating of some of the laws that do apply to it, according to from the Office of Compliance. (The pint-sized agency, created by Congress in 1995, is responsible for enforcing a number of workplace-rights laws in the legislative branch.) The sidewalks surrounding the three House office buildings, the report noted, with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Neither do the restrooms in the House and Senate office buildings and the Library of Congress’ James Madison Building.

The Office of Compliance cites certain congressional exemptions as particularly problematic. The agency’s inability to subpoena information regarding some legislative workers’ complaints about health and safety often means the office must negotiate with congressional offices to gather the facts it needs.  

“It can tie our hands sometimes,” said Barbara J. Sapin, the office’s executive director.

The Office of Compliance has urged Congress to apply the laws listed above to itself 鈥� except the Freedom of Information Act 鈥� with little result. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the non-voting delegate who represents the District of Columbia, in 2011 to do this, but it died in committee.

The of discrimination and harassment filed by legislative-branch workers with the Office of Compliance has nearly doubled in the last two years, from to . Workers’ complaints about retaliation or intimidation have risen even more sharply, from 36 in fiscal year 2009 to 108 in fiscal year 2011.

Even so, Debra Katz, a Washington lawyer who specializes in workplace-rights law, said some Capitol Hill employees might be holding back from filing complaints. House and Senate staffers, she said, are often reluctant to speak up about harassment or discrimination for fear of jeopardizing their careers.

“People are very loath to burn bridges by filing a complaint or going to the Office of Compliance,” she said. “They don’t want to go forward with bringing a claim, even when it’s covered under the law.”

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But according to from the department鈥檚 inspector general, one aspect of this mission remains far from accomplished.

DHS has spent $430 million over the past nine years to provide radios tuned to a common, secure channel to 123,000 employees across the country. Problem is, no one seems to know how to use them.

Only one of 479 DHS employees surveyed by the inspector general鈥檚 office was actually able to use the common channel, according to the report. Most of those surveyed 鈥� 72 percent 鈥� didn鈥檛 even know the common channel existed. Another 25 percent knew the channel existed but weren鈥檛 able to find it; 3 percent were able to find an older common channel, but not the current one.

The investigators also found that more than half of the radios did not have the settings for the common channel programmed into them. Only 20 percent of radios tested had all the correct settings.

The radios are supposed to help employees of Customs and Border Patrol, the Transportation Security Administration, the Coast Guard, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Secret Service, and other agencies with DHS communicate during crises, as well as normal operations.

DHS officials did not immediately respond to questions from ProPublica about what effect the radio problems could have on how the agency handles an emergency.

The $430 million paid for radio infrastructure and maintenance as well as the actual radios.

In a response letter to the report, Jim H. Crumpacker, the Department of Homeland Security鈥檚 liaison between the Government Accountability Office and the inspector general, wrote that DHS had made 鈥渟ignificant strides鈥� in improving emergency communications since 2003. But he acknowledged that DHS 鈥渉as had some challenges in achieving Department-wide interoperable communications goals.鈥�

The recent inspector general鈥檚 report is the latest in a string of critical assessments DHS has received on its efforts to improve communication between federal, state and local agencies. The Government Accountability Office that the Department of Homeland Security had 鈥済enerally not achieved鈥� this goal.

DHS has assigned a blizzard of offices and committees to oversee its radio effort since 2003, which the inspector general鈥檚 report claimed had 鈥渉indered DHS鈥� ability to provide effective oversight.鈥�

Also, none of the entities 鈥渉ad the authority to implement and enforce their recommendations,鈥� the report concluded. Tanya Callender, a spokeswoman for the inspector general, said the current office overseeing the effort hadn鈥檛 been given the authority to force agencies to use the common channel or even to provide instructions for programming the radios.

The inspector general recommended DHS standardize its policies regarding radios, which DHS agreed to do. But it rejected a second recommendation that it overhaul the office overseeing the radios to give it more authority.

鈥淒HS believes that it has already established a structure with the necessary authority to ensure鈥� that its various agencies can communicate, Crumpacker wrote in his response letter.

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