Cite as: 520 U. S. 751 (1997)
Breyer, J., dissenting
supra, at 767, the immediately subsequent words (about categories of offenders) do not explain the words "maximum term authorized," for they do not modify those words. Hence the question remains, "authorized by what?" All parties agree that the relevant maximum is the maximum set by sentencing statutes and not, for example, the top of the otherwise applicable Guideline range. But still, to which sentencing statutes does the phrase refer? The answer to this question is not written upon the statute's face.
The phrase could not possibly refer to every sentencing statute, nor to every statute that controls the length of the maximum legally possible sentence for a particular offender or kind of offender. It seems most unlikely that the phrase was intended to include, for example, 18 U. S. C. § 3565(a)(2)—a statute that authorizes a sentence for a probation violator up to the maximum initially available for the underlying crime. I have never heard anyone claim that an offender who commits his third drug crime while on probation for, say, a minor part in a counterfeiting offense, see § 471; USSG § 2B5.1, should receive a sentence that approximates the statutory maximum for the drug offense plus the 15-year counterfeiting statutory maximum added in addition. But see ante, at 757-758.
Nor, to take another example, could the phrase mean to include the federal statute that governs "[m]ultiple sentences of imprisonment," 18 U. S. C. § 3584—a statute that grants sentencing judges broad authority to "run" multiple sentences either "concurrently or consecutively." That statute would permit a judge to impose, say, a 20-year maximum sentence for each count of a six-count indictment and run those sentences consecutively, producing a total sentence of 120 years. Yet judges would not impose a sentence of 120 years upon an offender who engaged in a single related set of six 10-gram cocaine sales, even if each sale were the subject of a separate count in a prosecutor's indictment. (The Guidelines would not permit this 120-year imaginary sen-
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