What is it? What exact steps would be taken? Do we need it?
Investigative journalism is dead in this country.
Network carriers, like ISPs, have to be neutral to the content and source of the data. There are many exceptions, such as reasonable necessary network management. This is the state of the Internet we're used to.
Some extremists on the net neutrality side say there can be no intereference, that all packets should be first-come, first-serve. That just shows a basic ignorance of how networks work, and the difference between the requirements of various protocols. I haven't seen a call for this extreme from anybody in the government.
What exact steps would be taken?
At best, none. Carriers don't degrade competitive content or block otherwise legal content, and the government doesn't penalize them for doing so.
Do we need it?
That's the big question. The ISPs have publicly stated they want to start doing this, even went on a compaign to portray content providers as freeloaders on their networks in order to garner support. They have started to mess with peer-to-peer traffic under the auspices of stopping "abusers" (i.e., people who actually use the bandwidth they pay for), and may mess with more if so inclined. The threat of regulation seems to have kept them mostly at bay though.