Cite as: 522 U. S. 398 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
or deposition, knowing the same to contain any fraudulent or fictitious statement or entry, in any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States . . . .' " Id., at 92-93. The defendant in Gilliland, relying on the interpretive canon ejusdem generis,2 argued that the statute should be read to apply only to matters in which the Government has a financial or proprietary interest. In rejecting that argument, we noted that Congress had specifically amended the statute to cover " 'any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States,' " thereby indicating "the congressional intent to protect the authorized functions of governmental departments and agencies from the perversion which might result from the deceptive practices described." Id., at 93. Petitioner would elevate this statement to a holding that § 1001 does not apply where a perversion of governmental functions does not exist. But it is not, and cannot be, our practice to restrict the unqualified language of a statute to the particular evil that Congress was trying to remedy—even assuming that it is possible to identify that evil from something other than the text of the statute itself. The holding of Gilliland certainly does not exemplify such a practice, since it rejected the defendant's argument for a limitation that the text of the statute would not bear. And even the relied-upon dictum from Gilliland does not support restricting text to supposed purpose, but to the contrary acknowledges the reality that the reach of a statute often exceeds the precise evil to be eliminated. There is no inconsistency whatever between the proposition that Congress intended "to protect the authorized functions of governmental departments and agencies from the perversion which might result" and the propo-2 "Under the principle of ejusdem generis, when a general term follows a specific one, the general term should be understood as a reference to subjects akin to the one with specific enumeration." Norfolk & Western R. Co. v. Train Dispatchers, 499 U. S. 117, 129 (1991).
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