(FORTUNE Magazine) – The old Congress is still haggling over impeachment and the new Congress hasn't even been sworn in, but the battle lines are already being drawn for one of the signature struggles of 1999: what to do with the independent-counsel statute, the law that transformed Ken Starr into a national figure, his report into a soft-porn bestseller, and the presidency into a daytime soap.

With the GOP still bitter from Lawrence Walsh's Iran-contra investigation, and Democrats reeling from Starr's, the potential exists for a bloody fight on the Hill. Though the two sides may hate the law equally, the temptation for partisan battle already seems irresistible. But by the time hearings on reauthorizing the statute are finished in the winter or spring, lawmakers are going to be so contentious, so conflicted, and so confused that in desperation they may decide...not to decide at all.

In theory, of course, each party has its own bold, visionary scheme for taking the teeth out of the legislation. Many GOP lawmakers are already talking about paring back sharply the number of officials who could be vulnerable to one of Starr's successors, and about changing how the prosecutors are appointed and limiting how much they could spend. (Starr, after all, had an unlimited budget and still managed to exceed it.) The Democrats have their own ideas. Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat on the committee set to review the statute, says it needs "radical surgery." But many in his party are looking at a solution that is nothing if not ironic in the post-Watergate era: They want to make the independent counsel answerable to a newly enhanced, more independent Justice Department Office of Public Integrity.

The last time Congress looked at the independent-counsel statute, in 1994, the Republicans were eager to make the proceedings a referendum on Lawrence Walsh, the Iran-contra prosecutor. This time it's inevitable that the Democrats will try to place Starr firmly at center stage. So don't imagine that the tawdry battles over Monica Lewinsky will fade with the new year, or with the new Congress, or even after any House impeachment or Senate trial. As the purported failings and abuses of Starr's investigation are detailed to the committee, all the combatants you've come to know and loathe will come forward to air the dirty laundry--including the dry cleaning--one last time, although this time the focus will be as much on Starr as it has been on Clinton.

But for all the posturing and righteous indignation about the independent-counsel law, it is the nondecision decision that seems most likely now--and maybe most perilous. The law expires at midnight June 30, and there's a good chance that despite both parties' best efforts, it won't be mended, overhauled, or reshaped. It may just wither away: A Congress accustomed to doing nothing is likely in the end to do just that. And because the independent-counsel statute is a classic Washington phenomenon--nobody understands it, but everybody's an expert --there's a good chance of deadlock. In which case things may revert to the not-so-good old days of the Nixon era, when special counsels were appointed and supervised by the Attorney General. Archibald Cox, you may remember, didn't have much independence during his Watergate inquiry. Nor much job security. It's all beginning to look strangely familiar.

DAVID SHRIBMAN is the Washington bureau chief of the Boston Globe and a Pulitzer Prize-winning political reporter.