Cite as: 511 U. S. 328 (1994)
Stevens, J., dissenting
measures they establish to assure against the receipt of such hazardous waste." Ibid.
These comments referred to the Senate bill that became law after a majority of the Senate followed the Committee's recommendation "that the bill (as amended) do pass." Id., at 1.6 Given this commentary, it is quite unrealistic to assume that the omission of the word "generating" from the particularized description of management activities in the statute was intended to render the statutory description any less inclusive than either the 1980 regulation or the Committee Report. It is even more unrealistic to assume that legislators voting on the 1984 amendment would have detected any difference between the statutory text and the Committee's summary just because the term "generating" does not appear in the 1984 amendment. A commonsense reading of the statutory text in the light of the Committee Report and against the background of the 1980 regulation reveals an obvious purpose to preserve, not to change, the existing rule.7
6 The Conference Committee adopted the Senate amendment verbatim. Its Report stated: "The Senate amendment clarifies that an energy recovery facility is exempt from hazardous waste requirements if it burns only residential and non-hazardous commercial wastes and establishes procedures to assure hazardous wastes will not be burned at the facility." H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 98-1133, p. 106 (1984).
7 The majority's refusal to attach significance to " 'a single word in a committee report,' " ante, at 337, reveals either a misunderstanding of, or a lack of respect for, the function of legislative committees. The purpose of a committee report is to provide the Members of Congress who have not taken part in the committee's deliberations with a summary of the provisions of the bill and the reasons for the committee's recommendation that the bill should become law. The report obviously does not have the force of law. Yet when the text of a bill is not changed after it leaves the committee, the Members are entitled to assume that the report fairly summarizes the proposed legislation. What makes this Report significant is not the single word "generation," but the unmistakable intent to maintain an existing rule of law. The omission of the single word "generating" from the statute has no more significance than the omission of the same word from the text of the 1980 regulation.
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