supermajority

Definitions

Examples

• There is an excitement in the air about San Diego having a majority of Democrats on the County Board of Supervisors and a supermajority on the City Council, as well as a Democratic mayor.

• It’s rare to get a supermajority of 60 senators to agree on changes, and much of the Democrats’ ambitions—Medicare for All, police reform, climate change policy—would likely stall in the Senate.

• Democrats are trying to break a supermajority there just to have a bit more of a say.

• In other words, the conservative legal movement is poised to remake large swaths of American law — and it’s well-positioned to do so in the years to come so long as Republicans control a supermajority of Supreme Court seats.

• The filibuster has turned the Senate from an institution in which bills passed when a majority of senators support them to an institution in which bills can only pass, with rare exceptions, with the backing of a 60-vote supermajority.

• Caution: Wonkjuice is not intended as a substitute for a supermajority.

• “Married people had a supermajority of political power at the time the [current tax] rules were enacted,” Kahng notes.

• But they fell three votes short of the supermajority required to send the package to Congress.

• That vote, however, was insufficient because the bill moved through fast-track procedures that require a two-thirds supermajority.

• But if the Republicans succeed in blocking the bill, they may end up electing a supermajority of Democrats in November.