780
Breyer, J., dissenting
terms" for repeat drug offenders, S. Rep. No. 98-225, at 175). And, at the same time, it might have thought an increase to 30 real-time years would have added significantly to costs, without significantly advancing any other punitive purpose. See generally Supplementary Report 71, 73 (predicting an 8%-10% increase in federal prison populations from 1987 to 2002 due solely to the effects of the career offender subsection).
Finally, as a matter of policy, the Commission might have believed the Guidelines would create a more coherent sentencing system if its Career Offender Guideline basically recreated recidivist real-time maximums, rather than increasing those maximums by folding in the additional time that previously had represented parole. Supra, at 772-774.
This discussion of policy may help to make clear one reason why I find the majority's decision regrettable. The decision interferes with a legitimate exercise of the Commission's authority to write Guidelines that reconcile the various, sometimes competing, goals that Congress set forth. The United States Criminal Code contains a highly complicated group of statutes. Congress wrote many of them long before it thought of creating sentencing Guidelines. Congress continues to write other statutes that the Commission, when revising its Guidelines, may, or may not, find easy to reconcile with what has gone before. Congress understood that the Commission's task is complex. Congress understood the importance of the statute's general goals—a fairer and more rational sentencing system. I believe that courts, when interpreting the authorizing Act, should recall Congress' overriding objectives and Congress' understood need to grant to this arm of the "judicial branch of the United States," 28 U. S. C. § 991(a), the discretionary authority necessary to achieve them. I would allow the Commission to interpret the ambiguous words of the statute before us with these general congressional objectives in mind.
I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
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