So what does it all mean anyway?
First, 'mark up': This refers to the meeting of a House or Senate Committee, held to review the text of a bill before reporting it out.
Committee members offer and vote on proposed changes to the bill's language, known as amendments.
Most mark-ups end with a vote to send the new version of the bill to the floor of the US House of Representatives and the US Senate -- the two wings of the US Congress, the American Parliament -- for final approval.
In the case of the nuclear bill, the House International Relations Committee, where it passed 37-5, sends it to the floor of the 435-member House of Representatives, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where the voting was 16-2, sends it to the 100-member Senate.
The majorities, in both House and Senate Committees, are overwhelming to put it mildly, and while this has no direct bearing on how the House and Senate will vote on the bill, it sends a strong message that the respective committees, that held marathon inquiries, heard hours of expert testimony and worked long hours on the precise wording of changes to the bill as submitted by the Bush administration, are solidly behind it.
Senator Richard Lugar, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, indicated as much when he told rediff India Abroad that the thumping majority in favour of the bill would "send a strong message" to the full Senate.
"I believe we will have strong support on the floor," Lugar, who authored the Senate bill along with Senator Joseph Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said.
While the successful mark-up in the House and Senate is a major step towards eventual passage of the deal, it is merely one step.
Next up, the bills will be taken up for debate by the full House and Senate, following which it will be voted on in a straight up-and-down vote (which means that neither House of Congress will attach amendments to it).
The voting is yet to be scheduled. Congress reconvenes after the July 4 (the US Independence Day) recess on July 11, and will be in session for six weeks, till the long summer recess.
Whether the House and Senate take up the nuclear bill for consideration during this period is up to the respective patrty leaderships, who have to consider competing legislation requiring their attention, and assign time for debate and voting on the nuclear bill.
Senator Lugar warned that given the many domestic legislative priorities backed up, scheduling a vote in the two Houses of Congress could likely entail a delay, though he was optimistic that the leadership in both Houses would strive to bring the bill to the floor at the earliest possible.
Once the respective bills reach the floors of the House and the Senate, the procedure calls for a straight debate and an up and down vote. The House proceedings are likely to be reasonably speedy; the same cannot be said of the Senate, where Senator Byron Dorgan, chair of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, has vowed to do all he can to kill the bill.
While that may be beyond the realm of Dorgan's capability given the support, the senator has indicated that he could use the tactic of the filibuster to delay the vote.
'Filibuster', which derives from a Dutch word meaning 'pirate', is an informal term for any attempt to block or delay Senate action on a bill or other matter by debating it at considerable length, by offering numerous procedural motions, or using other delaying or obstructive actions.
The senator opting for this tactic (the House of Representatives, incidentally, cannot use the filibuster) has, during the debate, to speak continuously for as long as he can, without ever leaving the podium for breaks for food or for any other reason.
Interestingly, there is nothing in the rules that says a senator filibustering a bill has to speak to the subject. During the 1930s, for instance, Senator Huey Long used the tactic against bills that he thought favored the rich over the poor.
The senator from Louisiana frustrated his colleagues by reciting from Shakespeare, and reading out recipes from a book, to pass time.
The record for the longest individual filibustering speech however goes to the late Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes straight while seeking to delay voting on the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
While Senator Dorgan has threatened to use the tactic, sources on Capitol Hill say that it will not amount to more than some delay. Given that the House and Senate committees voted by overwhelming margins in favor of the bill it is unlikely, the sources say, that a few naysayers can harm the legislation by delaying tactics.
If and when the House and Senate vote on the bill, it will 'go to conference' -- where leaders of the House and Senate will convene to try and resolve any differences in language and/or intent between the two bills.
At the end of conference, the House and Senate leaderships will come up with a single, unified bill, which will then be presented to the President of the United States for his signature before it can become law.
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