Sentence:  A President and a “<WSD>superminority</WSD>" 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. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  A voting block which, although it has less than 50% of the vote, has sufficient numbers to prevent any other group from forming a supermajority.