Cite as: 518 U. S. 839 (1996)
Rehnquist, C. J., dissenting
"the dollar value of the relief the Government would obtain" if respondents had to comply with the modified capital-infusion requirements. Ante, at 900. Rather the opinion concludes that FIRREA, the law involved in this case, was "tainted by" self-relief based on "the attention" that Congressmen "[gave] to the regulatory contracts prior to passage" of the Act. Ibid.
Indeed, judging from the principal opinion's use of comments of individual legislators in connection with the enactment of FIRREA, it would appear that the sky is the limit so far as judicial inquiries into the question whether the statute was "free of governmental self-interest" or rather "tainted" by a Government objective of "self-relief." It is difficult to imagine a more unsettling doctrine to insert into the law of Government contracts. By fusing the roles of the Government as lawgiver and as contractor—exactly what Horowitz warned against doing—the principal opinion makes some sort of legislative intent critical in deciding these questions. When it enacted FIRREA was the Government interested in saving its own money, or was it interested in preserving the savings of those who had money invested in the failing thrifts?
I think it preferable, rather than either importing great natural-law principles or probing legislators' intent to modify the sovereign acts doctrine, to leave that law where it is. Lynch stands for the proposition that the congressional repeal of a statute authorizing the payment of money pursuant to a contractual agreement is a breach of that contract. But, as the term "public and general" implies, a more general regulatory enactment—whether it be the Legal Tender Acts involved in Deming, supra, or the embargo on shipments of silk by freight involved in Horowitz—cannot by its enforcement give rise to contractual liability on the part of the Government.
Judged by these standards, FIRREA was a general regulatory enactment. It is entitled "[a]n [a]ct to reform, recapi-
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