228
Opinion of the Court
added). The petitioner, in contending that the statute displaces federal common law, says that "any right" means only a right created elsewhere in the same Act of Congress, for example, by various regulatory enforcement provisions. E. g., § 1818(b) (cease-and-desist provision). But that is not what the Act says nor does its language compel so restrictive a reading. That language, read naturally, suggests an interpretation broad enough to save rights provided by other state, or federal, law.
For another thing, Congress enacted the statute against a background of failing savings associations, see 135 Cong. Rec. 121 (1989) (statement of Rep. Roth); 135 Cong. Rec. 1760 (1989) (statement of Sen. Graham), large federal payments to insured bank depositors, and recent changes in state law designed to limit pre-existing officer and director negligence liability. See, e. g., Fla. Stat. § 607.0831 (1993) ("recklessness or an act or omission . . . committed in bad faith or with malicious purpose"); Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 1701.59(D) (1994) ("deliberate intent to cause injury to the corporation or undertaken with reckless disregard for the best interests of the corporation"). The state-law changes would have made it more difficult for the Federal Government to recover, from negligent officers and directors, federal funds spent to rescue failing savings banks and their depositors. And the background as a whole supports a reading of the statute as an effort to preserve the Federal Government's ability to recover funds by creating a standard of care floor.
The legislative history, insofar as it is relevant, supports this conclusion. Members of Congress repeatedly referred to the harm that liability-relaxing changes in state law had caused the Federal Government, hence the taxpayer, as federal banking agencies tried to recover, from negligent officers and directors, some of the money that federal insurers had to pay to depositors in their failed banks. E. g., 135 Cong. Rec. 7150-7151 (1989) (statement of Sen. Riegle) ("[T]he establishment of a Federal standard of care is based
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