Cite as: 503 U. S. 30 (1992)
Opinion of the Court
ance with the phrase that introduces subsection (c) ("Except as provided in subsections (a) and (b) of this section"). This exception, in other words, could be read to mean that the rules established in subsections (a) and (b) for waiver of Government "claim[s]" that are "property of the estate" are exclusive, and preclude any resort to subsection (c) for that purpose. That reading would bar the present suit, since the right to recover a postpetition transfer under § 550 is clearly a "claim" (defined in § 101(4)(A)) and is "property of the estate" (defined in § 541(a)(3)). (The dissent appears to read paragraphs (c)(1) and (c)(2) as being independent but provides no explanation of what the textual exception could mean under that reading.)
The foregoing are assuredly not the only readings of subsection (c), but they are plausible ones—which is enough to establish that a reading imposing monetary liability on the Government is not "unambiguous" and therefore should not be adopted. Contrary to respondent's suggestion, legislative history has no bearing on the ambiguity point. As in the Eleventh Amendment context, see Hoffman, supra, at 104, the "unequivocal expression" of elimination of sovereign immunity that we insist upon is an expression in statutory text. If clarity does not exist there, it cannot be supplied by a committee report. Cf. Dellmuth v. Muth, 491 U. S. 223, 228-229 (1989).
IV
Respondent proposes several alternative grounds for affirming the judgment below, all unpersuasive. First, it claims that the necessary waiver can be found in 28 U. S. C. § 1334(d), which grants the district court in which a bankruptcy case is initiated "exclusive jurisdiction of all of the property, wherever located, of the debtor as of the commencement of such case, and of property of the estate." Respondent urges us to construe this language as empowering a bankruptcy court to compel the United States or a State to return any property, including money, that passes into the
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