NEW YORK — New tools are coming to fight robocalls, but don’t expect unwanted calls to disappear.

Political gridlock could derail bills aimed at beefing up enforcement and forcing phone companies to do more. The companies have been slow to act against such automated calls on their own. And even if companies do implement better technology, scammers and telemarketers will somehow get through in this never-ending arms race.

“We get things working really well. We’re flagging all these calls as scams. And then the scammers find a new way,” said Grant Castle, vice president of engineering at T-Mobile. “We have to adjust. It is a constant back-and-forth.”

Still, there’s hope that new efforts from the Federal Communications Commission and the industry should help you dodge many robocalls, even if they won’t go away completely. In a scheduled vote Thursday with big implications, the FCC is clarifying that phone companies can block many unwanted calls without asking customers first.

Phone scams have cost victims millions of dollars. And they disrupt institutions, not just your dinner. A hospital in Florida, the Moffitt Cancer Center, received 6,600 calls over 90 days faked to look as though they were coming from inside the hospital, diverting 65 hours of staff time from patient care.

The aggravation isn’t limited to scammers pretending to be from the IRS or Social Security. Call-blocker YouMail estimates that about a third of robocalls come from debt collectors and companies pitching cruises or insurance.

The robocall problem has exploded because cheap software makes it easy to make mass calls. Scammers don’t care if you’ve added your number to the government’s Do Not Call list.