“Just wait until next year!” is the defeated October cry of not just Chicago Cubs fans. Advocates of major federal legislation to overhaul telecommunications law have the same autumnal expression. This year, new telecommunications legislation came closer than usual, but still all too predictably short. Many telecommunications businesses invested heavily in lobbying for legislation, but legislative failure does not necessarily mean a bad investment.

One major telecommunications bill passed the House, and a different one passed the Senate Commerce Committee and still awaits Senate floor action. Although a Senate floor vote and a successful conference are theoretically possible in a congressional lame duck session after the election, the likelihood of success is practically zero.

The issues for telecommunications legislation change each year. Three years ago, the topic was broadband deregulation, now passé. Now, the issues du jour are federal pre-emption of local cable franchising authority and network neutrality. Neither issue was widely discussed until two years ago, much less familiar to members of Congress.

Some members of Congress convincingly state that the fate of America hangs in the balance on these two issues. In a few years these topics, like so many before them, will be outdated and forgotten, and not because they were resolved by federal legislation. Instead they will more likely be resolved by federal regulation, by state and local legislation, by new technologies, or simply by the passage of time. Telecommunications policy will have moved on to other topics.

This year’s legislation failed to pass not for want of either strong business interest or congressional leadership. Practically every major communications company in America weighed in on this legislation. The legislation was spearheaded by Rep. Joe Barton in the House and Senator Stevens in the Senate, the powerful chairmen of each chamber’s Commerce Committee. But even these skilled chairmen with both acumen and effort could not solve the riddle of passing a new telecommunications law.

The riddle is not merely for telecommunications. One of the advantages of our government, which we appreciate even more this Columbus Day, is that it passes few new laws. Political pundits complain, but most businesses ultimately cheer. Perhaps that’s why the stock market generally rises more when Congress is out of session than when it is in session. Laws that rarely change, even demonstrably harmful ones such as Sarbanes-Oxley, have at least the virtue of predictability. In the business realm, predictability usually trumps policy fashions of the day.

Much of the reason for predictably stable laws is that Congress is designed to preserve inertia. While thousands of bills are introduced each year, only a few hundred involve major national issues, and of these only a few dozen have any realistic chance of passage. Of these, aside from spending bills, only a few major bills will actually pass and become law each year. As a consequence, new laws, even bad ones, are scarce and precious. Scarcity makes the rule of law all the more important as new laws cannot predictably be conjured to address unexpected circumstances.

Infrequency of success does not deter legislative efforts, particularly in the area of telecommunications. In the past several decades, members of Congress have introduced major new telecommunications legislation practically every year. In 1992, Congress passed comprehensive cable legislation over President George H.W. Bush’s veto. A few years later, Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the first major comprehensive revision of federal communications law since 1934. In other years, Congress has amended isolated sections of communications law, but comprehensive legislation has foundered.

Despite the absence of a new telecommunications law this year, the legislation is still widely viewed as a success. This year’s political framing of the debate on cable franchises and network neutrality sent political signals that likely influenced the Federal Communications Commission, state regulators, and state legislators. Aware of federal legislative efforts at pre-emption, many states have adopted new cable franchising laws. The concept of network neutrality, little known before this Congress, is widely known today.

So 2006, like most years, will close without a major new telecommunications law. Many businesses will line up again to support new telecommunications legislation in 2007, not necessarily with expectations of a new law, but with expectations of framing public debate to shift policy in a more favorable direction.

A former FCC commissioner, Mr. Furchtgott-Roth is president of Furchtgott-Roth Economic Enterprises. He can be reached at hfr@furchtgott-roth.com