Cite as: 518 U. S. 839 (1996)
Opinion of Souter, J.
ments of FIRREA govern only the allocation of resources to a thrift and require no payments to the Government at all.26
We recognize, of course, that while agreements to insure private parties against the costs of subsequent regulatory change do not directly impede the exercise of sovereign power, they may indirectly deter needed governmental regulation by raising its costs. But all regulations have their costs, and Congress itself expressed a willingness to bear the costs at issue here when it authorized FSLIC to "guarantee [acquiring thrifts] against loss" that might occur as a result of a supervisory merger. 12 U. S. C. § 1729(f)(2) (1988 ed.) (repealed 1989). Just as we have long recognized that the Constitution " 'bar[s] Government from forcing some people alone to bear public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole,' " Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U. S. 374, 384 (1994) (quoting Armstrong v. United States, 364 U. S. 40, 49 (1960)), so we must reject the suggestion that the Government may simply shift costs of legislation onto its contractual partners who are adversely affected by the change in the law, when the Government has assumed the risk of such change.
The Government's position would not only thus represent a conceptual expansion of the unmistakability doctrine beyond its historical and practical warrant, but would place the doctrine at odds with the Government's own long-run interest as a reliable contracting partner in the myriad workaday transaction of its agencies. Consider the procurement con-26 This point underscores the likelihood that damages awards will have the same effect as an injunction only in cases, like Bowen, where a private party seeks the return of payments to the Government. The classic examples, of course, are tax cases like St. Louis v. United Railways Co., 210 U. S. 266 (1908). Because a request for rebate damages in that case would effectively have exempted the plaintiffs from the law by forcing the reimbursement of their tax payments, the dissent is quite wrong to suggest, see post, at 928-929, that the plaintiffs could have altered the outcome by pleading their case differently.
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