378
Opinion of the Court
would seem to extend to implementation of the local-competition provisions.5
The incumbent LECs and state commissions (hereinafter respondents) argue, however, that § 201(b) rulemaking authority is limited to those provisions dealing with purely interstate and foreign matters, because the first sentence of § 201(a) makes it "the duty of every common carrier engaged in interstate or foreign communication by wire or radio to furnish such communication service upon reasonable request therefor . . . ." It is impossible to understand how this use of the qualifier "interstate or foreign" in § 201(a), which limits the class of common carriers with the duty of providing communication service, reaches forward into the last sentence of § 201(b) to limit the class of provisions that the Commission has authority to implement. We think that the grant in § 201(b) means what it says: The FCC has rule-making authority to carry out the "provisions of this Act," which include §§ 251 and 252, added by the Telecommunications Act of 1996.6
5 Justice Breyer says, post, at 420, that "Congress enacted [the] language [of § 201(b)] in 1938," and that whether it confers "general authority to make rules implementing the more specific terms of a later enacted statute depends upon what that later enacted statute contemplates." That is assuredly true. But we think that what the later statute contemplates is best determined, not by speculating about what the 1996 Act (and presumably every other amendment to the Communications Act since 1938) "foresees," ibid., but by the clear fact that the 1996 Act was adopted, not as a freestanding enactment, but as an amendment to, and hence part of, an Act which said that "[t]he Commission may prescribe such rules and regulations as may be necessary in the public interest to carry out the provisions of this Act." Justice Breyer cannot plausibly assert that the 1996 Congress was unaware of the general grant of rulemaking authority contained within the Communications Act, since § 251(i) specifically provides that "[n]othing in this section shall be construed to limit or otherwise affect the Commission's authority under section 201."
6 Justice Breyer appeals to our cases which say that there is a " 'presumption against the pre-emption of state police power regulations,' " post, at 420, quoting from Cipollone v. Liggett Group, Inc., 505 U. S. 504, 518
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