The Hindu Business Line : <I>Not so soon </I>

The Bush Administration has been quick in having introduced in the US Congress the Bill to give effect to the nuclear deal with India. The usual procedure is for Bills meant for the latter's consideration to go "down the hopper" to the offices of the Senate and/or the House of Representatives (House, for short), leaving it to the aides to process them in the ordinary course.

In the case of the Bill to amend the Atomic Energy Act pursuant to the nuclear deal, the Administration has succeeded in getting it introduced in the House by its International Affairs Committee chairman, Republican Henry Hyde, and its ranking Democrat, Representative Tom Lantos, and in the Senate by Senator Richard Lugar, Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. This is no mean achievement.

However, no Bill can come up to either the House or the Senate for consideration without first being subjected to a clause-by-clause scrutiny by the concerned Committees. The Congressional Committees are especially wary of anything that smacks of special treatment emanating from the Administration. The normal procedure is for the House and Senate Committees separately to schedule a series of hearings and invite witnesses who are knowledgeable on the subject or connected with implementation to make their statements and answer questions.

Each Committee that has held hearings then prepares its own version of the Bills, and disagreements are sorted out at joint conferences so that the version going before the full House or Senate is identical.

In view of the strong feelings aroused by the deal, and the fact that all the 435 Members of the House and one-third of the 100-member Senate are facing election this winter, there is every chance that the Bill will get stalled until after the elections are over, particularly because of the nervousness among Republicans caused by the President's lowest-ever ratings.

B. S. Raghavan

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