Cite as: 510 U. S. 471 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
We reject this reading of the statute. As we have already noted, § 1346(b) describes the scope of jurisdiction by reference to claims for which the United States has waived its immunity and rendered itself liable. FDIC seeks to uncouple the scope of jurisdiction under § 1346(b) from the scope of the waiver of sovereign immunity under § 1346(b). Under its interpretation, the jurisdictional grant would be broad (covering all claims sounding in tort), but the waiver of sovereign immunity would be narrow (covering only those claims for which a private person would be held liable under state law). There simply is no basis in the statutory language for the parsing FDIC suggests. Section 2679(a)'s reference to claims "cognizable" under § 1346(b) means cognizable under the whole of § 1346(b), not simply a portion of it.7
FTCA provided plaintiffs' "exclusive remedy," even though the FTCA itself did not provide a means of recovery. Id., at 166. Smith did not involve § 2679(a), the provision at issue in this case, but rather § 2679(b)(1), which provides that the FTCA remedy is "exclusive of any other civil action or proceeding for money damages . . . against the employee whose act or omission gave rise to the claim." The Court had no occasion in Smith to address the meaning of the term "cognizable" because § 2679(b)(1) does not contain the term. We therefore find Smith unhelpful in this regard.
7 Nothing in our decision in Hubsch v. United States, 338 U. S. 440 (1949) (per curiam), is to the contrary. In Hubsch, the parties submitted to this Court for approval a settlement agreement under 28 U. S. C. § 2677 (1946 ed., Supp. IV), which at the time provided that the Attorney General, "with the approval of the court," could "settle any claim cognizable under section 1346(b)." 338 U. S., at 440 (emphasis added). We construed § 2677 "as imposing on the District Court the authority and responsibility for passing on proposed compromises," notwithstanding the fact that it had found that the claimant failed to prove the Government employee acted within the scope of his authority (the fifth element of § 1346(b) mentioned above). Id., at 441. See also Hubsch v. United States, 174 F. 2d 7 (CA5 1949). Our holding in the case recognized that a claim does not lose its cognizability simply because there has been a failure of proof on an element of the claim. In this case there has been no failure of proof; rather, Meyer's claim does not fall within the terms of § 1346(b) in the first instance.
479
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