Superminority

A President and a “superminority" of Congress—41 percent of one house—in the exercise of the constitutional mandate to “ensure” that outlays do not exceed receipts, might kill or maim any program they did not like—social security, environmental, defense—so long as the President could hold the support of 41 percent of the members of one house of Congress.

Under this approach, a superminority of 34 Senators could prevent a sole executive agreement from enjoying the full force of the supremacy clause vis-a-vis state laws.

When the votes were counted, the superminority resolution revoking the pledge took 37 percent, but backers of the pledge also failed to win a majority, so the UAW found itself with no formal position on the crucial issue.

What my colleagues need to understand is that we are setting up, not a powerful supermajority, what we are doing is setting up a powerful superminority which will control the process.

This is an escalating process until we have a highly privileged superminority with a vested interest in increasing its numbers and its power. At that point the people have become servants of the bureaucracy, rather than the bureaucracy being a service function of the government, working for the citizenry.

State governors clamor for state control. They fear local control could generate a hodge—podge of conflicting rules and that a state's solid waste policy could be dictated by a "superminority" of activists in a given county.

Perhaps because of that, the Russian superminority became singled out as a target of nationalist attack.

What, then, is the policy justification for reallocating power in this manner in the direction that Citizens United does, away from the majority and toward an already disproportionately powerful wealthy superminority.