118
O'Connor, J., concurring in judgment
see ibid.; American Heritage Dictionary 772 (2d ed. 1985) ("substantial" precedes "relevant"), but this debate is beside the point. The Commissioner has already interpreted the language in § 20.2056(b)-4(a). In Revenue Ruling 93-48, the Commissioner ruled that the marital deduction is not "ordinarily" reduced when an executor allocates interest payments on deferred federal estate taxes to the postmortem income of the spousal bequest. Rev. Rul. 93-48, 1993-2 Cum. Bull. 271 ("[T]he value of a residuary charitable [or marital] bequest is [not] reduced by the amount of [interest] expenses payable from the income of the residuary property"). Justice Scalia contends that Revenue Ruling 93-48 should be disregarded because it was promulgated by the Commissioner only after her attempts to prevail on the contrary position in federal court repeatedly failed. Post, at 129-130. To be sure, the Commissioner may not have whole-heartedly embraced Revenue Ruling 93-48, but the Ruling nevertheless issued and we may not totally ignore the plain language of a regulation or ruling because the entity promulgating it did not really want to have to adopt it. See Connecticut Nat. Bank v. Germain, 503 U. S. 249, 253-254 (1992) ("We have stated time and time again that courts must presume that a legislature says in a statute what it means and means in a statute what it says there"); West Virginia Univ. Hospitals, Inc. v. Casey, 499 U. S. 83, 98 (1991) (rejecting argument that "the congressional purpose in enacting [a statute] must prevail over the ordinary meaning of statutory terms").
It is, as an initial matter, difficult to reconcile the Commissioner's treatment of interest under Revenue Ruling 93-48 with her position in this case. For all intents and purposes, interest accruing on estate taxes is functionally indistinguishable from the administrative expenses at issue here. By definition, neither of these expenses can exist prior to the decedent's death; before that time, there is no estate to administer and no estate tax liability to defer. Yet both
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