A month ago the desire for post-Enron reform appeared to have nearly burned out in Washington, but the blaze of headlines about Worldcom has put the clean-up of corporate America back on the political agenda.
President Bush injected a new note of urgency to the subject last week by denouncing corporate "fudges" such as those revealed by telecommunications giant Worldcom, which said it had hidden $3.85 billion in expenses.
Bush devoted his Saturday radio address to corporate governance and laid on another speech for July 9th.
And his spokesman said the Republican president "shares the goal" of a Democrat-sponsored Senate bill that would impose tough new oversight on the US accounting profession.
On Capitol Hill, the bill by Banking Committee chairman Mr Paul Sarbanes rocketed to the top of the Senate's "to-do" list for the post-Fourth of July break.
Once a controversial plan that looked unlikely to get out of committee, the Sarbanes accounting reform bill is now considered a good bet for passage, although it would have to be reconciled with a more business-friendly version approved by the House of Representatives before going to Bush's desk.
"Worldcom was the last straw. I think Congress will now pass something. With mid-term elections in the fall, no one wants to hear the public say, 'You haven't done anything about this'," said Ms Margaret Blair, a visiting professor at Georgetown University Law Center who specialises in corporate governance.
When the headlines were about Texas-based Enron, a major campaign contributor of Bush's that filed for bankruptcy in December, "Bush was trying to look the other way", Ms Blair added. But the Worldcom case is so stunning that Bush now has no choice but to get engaged, she said.
White House spokesman Mr Ari Fleischer said on Friday that "the President shares the goal of the Sarbanes bill".
Still, the devil is in the detail, and it remains unclear just how much of the 117-page bill Bush will openly embrace.
Back in March Bush proposed a 10-point plan for punishing corporate crooks by making them relinquish ill-gotten gains and banning them from running publicly held companies again. It also favoured a "regulatory board" for accountants.
A bill sponsored by Ohio Republican Mr Mike Oxley that passed the Republican-run House in April included some of Bush's ideas, and the market-regulating Securities and Exchange Commission has taken action on others.
But the Sarbanes plan is more sweeping than the others, restricting many consulting services auditors can provide.
