Cite as: 519 U. S. 278 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
and burdens of a regulation favor local inhabitants against outsiders"). We are consequently ill qualified to develop Commerce Clause doctrine dependent on any such predictive judgments, and it behooves us to be as reticent about projecting the effect of applying the Commerce Clause here, as we customarily are in declining to engage in elaborate analysis of real-world economic effects, Fulton Corp., supra, at 341-342, or to consider subtle compensatory tax defenses, Oregon Waste Systems, Inc. v. Department of Environmental Quality of Ore., 511 U. S. 93, 105 (1994). The most we can say is that modification of Ohio's tax scheme could subject LDC's to economic pressure that in turn could threaten the preservation of an adequate customer base to support continued provision of bundled services to the captive market. The conclusion counsels against taking the step of treating the bundled gas seller like any other, with the consequent necessity of uniform taxation of all gas sales.
3
Prudence thus counsels against running the risk of weakening or destroying a regulatory scheme of public service and protection recognized by Congress despite its noncompetitive, monopolistic character. Still less is that risk justifiable in light of Congress's own power and institutional competence to decide upon and effectuate any desirable changes in the scheme that has evolved. Congress has the capacity to investigate and analyze facts beyond anything the Judiciary could match, joined with the authority of the commerce power to run economic risks that the Judiciary should confront only when the constitutional or statutory mandate for judicial choice is clear. See, e. g., Bush v. Lucas, 462 U. S. 367, 389 (1983) (Congress "may inform itself through fact-finding procedures such as hearings that are not available to the courts"). One need not adopt Justice Black's extreme reticence in Commerce Clause jurisprudence to recognize in this instance the soundness of his statement that a challenge
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