MANY BILLS BUT FEW LAWS CONGRESS MEMEBERS FINAGLE INSTEAD OF PUSHING FOR A VOTE.

Byline: Lisa Friedman Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - Barely a month into the session, Congress has introduced more than 150 bills that would do everything from preserving American Indian languages to appropriating federal funds to clean perchlorate-contaminated groundwater.

But whatever happened to the hundreds of bills from last year - particularly ones introduced with such fanfare by Southern California lawmakers to repeal the phone tax, create health programs for minorities and, yes, to clean up perchlorate?

The short answer: Not much.

Of the nearly 200 bills introduced last year by Southland lawmakers, only about a dozen have made it into law. And of those, seven were simple resolutions expressing congressional support for such things as preventing teen violence or observing the 60th anniversary in 2005 of Victory in Europe Day. One was to name a post office after actor Karl Malden.

Analysts said the low success rates are hardly atypical. It's a reflection, many said, of a system in which only a select few - those with power and those with seniority - have the juice to turn a bill into a law.

``Most bills introduced go nowhere,'' said Thomas Mann, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C.

Last year, the House and Senate introduced more than 8,300 bills and resolutions. Of those, 174, or about 2 percent, became law.

The average was slightly better in the 108th Congress when the president signed 4 percent of more than 9,900 bills.

``You've got a bazillion bills out there, and you've got 435 members vying for attention,'' said Geoffrey James, a longtime Capitol Hill aide and spokesman for Rep. Howard ``Buck'' McKeon, R-Santa Clarita.

Getting a bill passed is no small undertaking.

``The system is designed to slow the passage of legislation,'' James said, noting that the Founding Fathers, in their wisdom of creating checks and balances, ``were trying to gum up the works.''

Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Sherman Oaks, said he is concerned about the low number of bills that pass, but is more concerned that so few of them get even a hearing.

``Too many important bills are never debated,'' he said.

GOP bragging rights

In the meantime, the system leaves GOP members, particularly those in the leadership, with far more bragging rights at the year's end than their Democratic counterparts.

Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Thousand Oaks, for example, got five resolutions passed on international issues. He also got a bill providing grants to help local prosecutors prosecute ``cold hit'' DNA cases through the House, and it is expected to clear the Senate.

McKeon, meanwhile, got legislation passed to improve access to job training, while his major bill to reauthorize the Higher Education Act still awaits action.

Some say calculating the number of bills a politician gets passed in a given year is a poor measure of power or effectiveness.

After all, Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Bakersfield, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, did not need legislation to nab more than $700 million for Kern County roads in a transportation bill last year, about 10 times as much as Los Angeles received.

Similarly, the $130 million that Rep. Howard Berman, D-Van Nuys, obtained for the 405 Freeway in that bill also didn't come from legislation, but from quiet negotiations.

Bill passage also doesn't reflect the use of back-room maneuvering or parliamentary tactics like the ones employed by Rep. Adam Schiff, D- Pasadena, to get a hearing in the House International Relations Committee on his bill to recognize the Armenian Genocide.

Schiff had threatened to bring an amendment to a State Department bill on the genocide in June - just as the Turkish prime minister was visiting Washington. To avoid an internationally embarrassing situation, House leaders granted Schiff the hearing.

The bill didn't pass, and isn't expected to pass at any time soon. Nevertheless, Schiff said the hearing brought ``tremendous momentum'' to the issue, and he counts it as one of his top achievements of 2005.

Legislative stew

Schiff got a resolution passed to honor the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, and he saw major Senate action on a bill he has to turn 500,000 acres in Southern California, known as the Rim of the Valley, into federally protected park land. He also managed to get portions of bills he has dealing with nuclear terrorism, port security, gang violence and the detaining of enemy combatants worked into larger legislation.

Indeed, lawmakers said, it's far more common to weave a portion of one's bill into a larger measure than to pass legislation verbatim.

``It's a stew, and you throw your ingredients in there and hope that they stick,'' Sherman said of the process.

President George W. Bush, for example, recently signed an executive order beefing up compliance with the Freedom of Information Act, a measure that included some of the provisions Sherman had been pushing for.

An immigration bill that Bush signed contained a watered-down version of legislation authored by Gallegly prohibiting federal agencies from accepting foreign consular identification cards. A separate immigration bill poised to hit the Senate this week includes a Gallegly measure making sure employers at critical infrastructure sites know the immigration status of their workers.

A spending bill for health and human services programs last year included some of legislation Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, introduced to prevent members of federal science advisory boards from having to meet political ``litmus tests'' and prohibiting them from making false or misleading statements on science.

Political advertising

Some lawmakers say they know full well many of their bills have little chance of passing from the outset.

So why even bother?

``It's called political advertising,'' said Mann of the Brookings Institute. ``It's a way of showing concern for issues. It's about members showing their interest in dealing with problems they think their constituents are concerned about.''

Waxman introduced 22 bills last year on everything from establishing an independent commission to prevent fraud and abuse in responding to Hurricane Katrina, to raising the standards for political appointees in public safety positions, to banning toxins in children's toys.

Two passed: a bill commemorating Simon Wiesenthal and legislation renaming a post office after actor Malden.

At the same time, though, Waxman's office produced an endless stream of investigative reports on Medicare, abstinence programs, pesticide testing on humans, nursing homes, drinking water and more. A Lexis/Nexis search of his name for 2005 produced more than 1,000 hits.

``You can't give up. It's important to put out there what the law should be, even if you recognize you're in the minority, and the majority is never going to let the bill come up, and the administration is never going to let the bill come up,'' Waxman spokeswoman Karen Lightfoot said.

And, she noted, oversight Waxman conducted in his role on the House Government Reform Committee of issues like steroid use in Major League Baseball and mine safety also produced changes that legislation might never have.

Finally, some lawmakers eschew bills altogether.

Berman, D-Van Nuys, introduced only one measure last year, addressing civil liberties issues in the Patriot Act. But his spokeswoman Gene Smith said Berman is known for employing a tactic many Democrats say they use - joining up on issues with Republicans, letting the GOP member with leadership clout be named up top.

Among the examples Smith cited: patent reform bills Berman has worked on with Rep. Rick Boucher, R-Va.; a bill Berman has pushed with McKeon to repeal Social Security provisions that they feel unfairly target police officers, teachers and other public servants; and AgJobs, a major guest-worker bill that Utah Republican Chris Cannon is carrying.

Lisa Friedman, [phone]

lisa.friedman(at)langnews.com

CAPTION(S):

5 photos, box

Photo:

(1) Rep. Howard Berman

(2) Rep. Elton Gallegly

(3) Rep. Howard ``Buck'' McKeon

(4) Rep. Brad Sherman

(5) Rep. Henry Waxman

Box:

How they fared

SOURCE: Congressional Records