I could be wrong about this, but I have a hard time imagining that this is going to be the dominant news item for the public, even if it's talked about alot in the halls of Congress. Other news is still going to happen, and all the other concerns that have been raging before will continue to rage again. New Orleans simply will not be something that most voters outside of Louisiana are going to consider their top issue.
It would be a plus for all involved to get over the blame-placing phase and onto the city rebuilding theme
What would really be a plus would be for the federal government to let the state, city, private charity, investors, and regular citizens take over, instead of constantly trying to make everything a federal issue.
By that I mean that Congress will be in session and the MSM will be sticking cameras in the faces of every Congresscritter that slows down for a minute, and Congress will be working on NO relief and associated issues for quite a while. Something else might come up, immigration being an ongoing issue that might have otherwise become the major issue, but with this disaster everything else is going to be also-rans.