Cite as: 503 U. S. 291 (1992)
Opinion of Souter, J.
partment of Justice to accompany the bill that became the Technical Amendments Act. The Department's analysis included this explanation for the proposal to delete the reference to § 3581(b): "Because of the effect of 18 U. S. C. § 3559(b)(2), deleting the reference to 18 U. S. C. § 3581(b) will tie the maximum sentences for juveniles to the maximum for adults, rather than making juvenile sentences more severe than adult sentences." 131 Cong. Rec. 14177 (1985). Congress had enacted § 3559 to reconcile the new sentencing schedule, providing for the incidents of conviction according to the offense's assigned letter grade, with the pre-existing body of federal criminal statutes, which of course included no assignments of letter grades to the particular offenses they created. Section 3559(a) provides a formula for assigning the missing letter based on the maximum term of imprisonment set by the statute creating the offense. Thus, as it stood at the time of the Technical Amendments Act, it read:
"(a) Classification
"An offense that is not specifically classified by a letter grade in the section defining it, is classified—
"(1) if the maximum term of imprisonment authorized is—
"(A) life imprisonment, or if the maximum penalty is death, as a Class A felony;
"(B) twenty years or more, as a Class B felony; "(C) less than twenty years but ten or more years, as a Class C felony;
"(D) less than ten years but five or more years, as a Class D felony;
"(E) less than five years but more than one year, as a Class E felony;
"(F) one year or less but more than six months, as a Class A misdemeanor;
"(G) six months or less but more than thirty days, as a Class B misdemeanor;
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