HARRISBURG -- A suburban Pittsburgh legislator's campaign to reduce the size of the Pennsylvania Legislature, the largest full-time assembly in the nation, suffered a major setback yesterday.

The House voted 136 to 65 against a move by state Rep. Mark Mustio, R-Moon, to force the size-reduction bill out of the House's State Government Committee, where it's been stalled for a few months.

Mr. Mustio was trying to use a legislative maneuver called a "discharge resolution" to get faster action on House Bill 55, his proposal to trim the House from 203 members to 161, and trim the Senate from 50 to 40. He also wanted a make a 20 percent cut in the General Assembly overall budget of $350 million.

Mr. Mustio needed at least 102 of the 203 House members to vote to take the bill out of committee and put it before the full House.

Mr. Mustio said his bill isn't dead, and Democrats who run the House, including Majority Leader Bill DeWeese of Waynesburg and Rep. Babette Josephs, D-Philadelphia, chairwoman of the State Government Committee, said they could still hold hearings around the state on Mr. Mustio's proposal.

Mr. Mustio said that was better than nothing, but he still saw hearings as a delaying tactic. He said committee hearings have been held in the past on bills to reduce the size of the Legislature, but then they died.

"They were never moved out of committee since I've got here in 2003. That's why I came up with the discharge resolution idea," he said.

Ms. Josephs seemed irked at Mr. Mustio for trying to go around her committee. "You never even asked me to hold hearings," she told him. "If someone would ask me, I'd schedule a hearing on the bill."

Mr. Mustio said he is concerned about dragging out the process. Even if the full House approves the bill, it would still have a long way to go.

The Senate would still have to approve this 2007-08 session, and then the House and Senate again would have to approve the bill in the 2009-10 session, and then state voters would have to approve in a referendum held no sooner than November 2009.

Mr. Mustio said Democrats were trying to bury the bill in committee.

"This issue never would have seen the light of day if I hadn't brought up the discharge resolution," he said.

Another thing a smaller Legislature has going against it is that both Democratic and Republican House leaders -- Mr. DeWeese and Sam Smith, R-Punxsutawney -- oppose downsizing the Legislature.

They claim that having fewer representatives will force smaller towns to be joined together in larger sized geographical districts, hurting people in small towns and rural areas.

Mr. Mustio held a news conference yesterday morning with several freshmen and sophomore legislators, those who were elected in the past year or two, most of them on a "reform of state government" platform. Cutting the size of the Legislature is often described as a reform issue.

"We haven't seen a lot of action so far on reform issues that people care about," said Rep. John Bear, R-Lancaster "We can't let this [downsizing] bill die in committee."