478
Opinion of the Court
feiture will occur whether or not the employer has made payments or acknowledged liability.
The addition of subsection (g)(2) in 1984 also precludes the primary argument made by the BRB in favor of its decisions in Dorsey and this case, and repeated by Cowart to us: That Congress in 1984, by reenacting the phrase "person entitled to compensation," adopted the Board's reading of that language in O'Leary. The argument might have had some force if § 33(g) had been reenacted without changes, but that was not the case. In 1984 Congress did more than reenact § 33(g); it added new provisions and new language which on their face appear to have the specific purpose of overruling the prior administrative interpretation. In light of the clear import of § 33(g)(2), the Board erred in relying on the purported lack of legislative history showing an explicit intent to reject the O'Leary decision. Even were it relevant, the Board's reading of the legislative history is suspect because as the federal respondent demonstrates, the legislative history of predecessor bills to the eventual 1984 enactment do indicate an intent to overturn O'Leary. See Longshoremen's and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act Amendments of 1981: Hearings on S. 1182 before the Subcommittee on Labor of the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, 97th Cong., 1st Sess., 209, 210-211, 396 (1981). In any event, administrative interpretation followed by congressional reenactment cannot overcome the plain language of a statute. Demarest v. Manspeaker, 498 U. S., at 190. And the language of § 33(g) is plain.
Our interpretation of § 33(g) is reinforced by the fact that the phrase "person entitled to compensation" appears elsewhere in the statute in contexts in which it cannot bear the meaning placed on it by Cowart. For example, § 14(h) of the LHWCA, 33 U. S. C. § 914(h), requires an official to conduct an investigation upon the request of a person entitled to compensation when, inter alia, the claim is controverted and payments are not being made. For that provision, the inter-
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