Abramoff deals, Congress quakes

Abramoff joins former associate Michael Scanlon, former press secretary to DeLay, as a witness for the prosecution. Mr. Scanlon reached a plea deal last year, which raised the stakes for Abramoff. The Department of Justice says the two men defrauded Indian tribes they represented out of tens of millions of dollars.

In exchange for the guilty plea and cooperation, Abramoff would probably get a reduced prison sentence. In the Washington case, he faces a maximum of 10 years; in the Florida case, in which he is pleading guilty to fraud and conspiracy in the purchase of a casino cruise line, he could get as many as seven years.

"Up until now, I've said it will involve just a few members," says Mr. Noble. "But if they've reached a plea agreement with Abramoff, it means he's turned over people higher than him, and they must have some pretty strong evidence.

The explosion of the Abramoff scandal also represents bad news for the White House, just as President Bush is preparing for his Jan. 31 State of the Union speech - an effort to build on the momentum he started last month, after a stumbling first year to his second term.

All of Washington is looking ahead to next November's midterm elections, and whether Congress's low approval ratings and Republican woes in particular can grow big enough to swing control of one or both houses of Congress to the Democrats. Polls show that so far, the Democrats' charge that Republicans have created a "culture of corruption" has not seeped into public consciousness. But, analysts say, the 2006 campaign has not started in earnest, and it's too soon to say how the public is perceiving the corruption message.

"This will crowd out a lot of the news about the new Bush agenda," says Paul Light, a political scientist at New York University. "He'll be going up to the Hill to present his agenda, and meanwhile you have six, 12, 20 members desperately trying to return money to Abramoff, and another bunch wondering how they will look in an orange jump suit."

If the Bush White House tries to minimize the scandal, "it feeds the view that Bush doesn't take ethics seriously," says Professor Light. Last year, a top White House aide, I. Lewis Libby, was indicted in the scandal surrounding the public revelation of a CIA agent's identity.

For Congress as an institution, the Abramoff scandal reinforces prevailing attitudes that are already set in stone, says Light, who has studied the issue of trust in politics. "The American public has become inured to congressional scandals, and as long as members are bringing home enough pork, they basically say, a pox on both their houses."

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