The Clinton administration supported the law when it was last renewed in 1994, but has withdrawn its support this time.
The Independent Counsel Act was supposed to take politics out of the investigation process. Under the law, if the attorney general finds sufficient evidence, he or she is required to ask a panel of three federal judges to appoint an independent counsel.
The law was inspired by Watergate's Saturday Night Massacre, when President Nixon fired special prosecutor Achibald Cox. Congress was looking for a way to have probes of alleged misconduct conducted by an independent investigator -- someone who didn't have to answer to the president or the Justice Department.
Attorney General Janet Reno has appointed the most independent counsels - seven, although Republicans criticized her for not appointing more to investigate how Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and other Democrats raised money for the 1996 elections.
Democrats say the Starr investigation was a perfect illustration of the excesses that can be achieved by an overly aggressive investigator with limitless amounts of money and time to play with. The cost of the five-year investigation of Clinton is estimated at between $40 million and $50 million.
And Republicans still have bad memories of independent counsel Lawrence Walsh's seven-year, $37 million investigation of President Reagan and the Iran-Contra affair. In fact, the law was allowed to expire in 1992, but was reauthorized in 1994 at the urging of the White House and the Justice Department.
Walsh's investigation of the Reagan White House and the Iran-Contra affair ended with 10 convictions and six presidential pardons. Two convictions were overturned on appeal. The long list of officials Walsh began investigating in 1986 included former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and White House aides Oliver North and John Poindexter.
Robert Bennett, the Washington lawyer who represented Clinton in the Paula Jones case and Weinberger in Iran-Contra, told a Senate committee that the law now is beyond repair, calling it "a nuclear weapon in the arsenal of partisan politics."
Deputy Attorney General Eric H. Holder agreed, telling a House subcommittee: "Despite its good intentions, the act has failed to accomplish its primary goal: the enhancement of confidence in the rule of law by the American people."
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