Cite as: 522 U. S. 52 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
the costs and 80% of the salaries of the program he administered. 513 F. 2d, at 662. Because the program had not yet entered a formal request for federal funding, the Second Circuit reasoned, "[t]here were no existing committed federal funds for the purpose." Ibid. The enactment of § 666 fore-closes this type of limitation. Acceptance of Salinas' suggestion that a bribe must affect federal funds before it falls within § 666(a)(1)(B) would run contrary to the statutory expansion that redressed the negative effects of the Second Circuit's narrow construction of § 201 in Del Toro. We need not consider whether the statute requires some other kind of connection between a bribe and the expenditure of federal funds, for in this case the bribe was related to the housing of a prisoner in facilities paid for in significant part by federal funds themselves. And that relationship is close enough to satisfy whatever connection the statute might require.
Salinas argues in addition that our decisions in Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U. S. 452 (1991), and McNally v. United States, 483 U. S. 350 (1987), require a plain statement of congressional intent before § 666(a)(1)(B) can be construed to apply to bribes having no effect on federal funds. In so arguing, however, Salinas makes too much of Gregory and McNally. In each of those cases, we confronted a statute susceptible of two plausible interpretations, one of which would have altered the existing balance of federal and state powers. We concluded that, absent a clear indication of Congress' intent to change the balance, the proper course was to adopt a construction which maintains the existing balance. Gregory, supra, at 460-461; see also McNally, supra, at 360.
"No rule of construction, however, requires that a penal statute be strained and distorted in order to exclude conduct clearly intended to be within its scope . . . ." United States v. Raynor, 302 U. S. 540, 552 (1938). As we held in Albertini, supra, at 680:
"Statutes should be construed to avoid constitutional questions, but this interpretative canon is not a license
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