A motion to impeach the President, Mr Clinton, for alleged perjury is expected to be approved by a Congressional committee next week and to be sent to the full House of Representatives for a vote before Christmas.
White House lawyers will defend the President before the House Judiciary Committee next Tuesday but the Republican majority is almost certain to approve one or more articles of impeachment by the end of the week.
What is less certain is whether there will be a majority among the 435 members of the House to impeach Mr Clinton.
If the House votes for one or more articles of impeachment, it would then be up to the Senate to try the President. A two-thirds majority of the 100 senators would be required to convict and dismiss Mr Clinton from office and this is regarded as extremely unlikely.
But even the prospect of the President facing a trial in the Senate is unnerving to the White House where an unnamed official told Associated Press that this could "paralyse" the country.
"Obviously if this were to pass the House . . . it could paralyse the country with a month's long trial," the official said. "This is something that could make it very difficult to focus on the real issues for a long period of time."
The situation in the House is very different. The Republicans have a 22-vote majority and thus have the numbers to impeach a President for the first time since Andrew Johnson in 1868. But some Republican moderates, led by Mr Peter King of New York, are working behind the scenes with the White House and some Democrats to draft a motion of censure which would replace an impeachment vote. Mr King is a strong supporter of President Clinton's role in the Northern Ireland peace process.
Mr King's claim that there are up to 20 Republicans who would refuse to vote for the impeachment of Mr Clinton is disputed by the Republican chief whip, Mr Tom Delay, who is strongly opposed to letting Mr Clinton off with censure instead of impeachment.
"Censure is not an option," Mr Delay told the Washington Post. Meanwhile, at the White House, there is some gloating at how the Republican attempt to extend the impeachment investigation to campaign fundraising abuses has quickly fizzled out. The Judiciary Committee chairman, Mr Henry Hyde, announced that there was no evidence of an impeachable offence by the President in confidential reports on the fundraising investigation written by the Director of the FBI, Mr Louis Freeh, and a senior Department of Justice official.
Lawyers for President Clinton told the committee last night they intended to take three to four days to present their impeachment defence of the president next week.