Cite as: 525 U. S. 366 (1999)
Opinion of Breyer, J.
§ 101(e)(1) (1995). The final legislation, however, rejected that proposed language. See 47 U. S. C. § 152(b). It cannot be thought that Congress "intend[ed] sub silentio to enact statutory language that it ha[d] earlier discarded in favor of other language." INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U. S. 421, 442-443 (1987) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
D
The FCC's strongest argument, in my view, is that its rate rules do not actually supplant local ratesetting authority; they simply set forth limits, creating a kind of envelope marking the outer bounds of what would constitute a reasonable local ratesetting system. The majority may accept a version of this argument, for it says the FCC has prescribed a "requisite pricing methodology" that "no more prevents the States from establishing rates than do the statutory 'Pricing standards' set forth in § 252(d)." Ante, at 384. That, however, is not what the FCC has done.
The FCC's rate regulations are not at all like § 252(d)'s pricing standards. The statute sets forth those standards in general terms, using such words as "based on . . . cost," "nondiscriminatory," and "just and reasonable." Terms such as these give ratesetting commissions broad methodological leeway; they say little about the "method employed" to determine a particular rate. FPC v. Hope Natural Gas Co., 320 U. S. 591, 602 (1944). The FCC's rules, on the other hand, are not general. The dozens of pages of text that set them forth are highly specific and highly detailed. See First Report & Order ¶¶ 672-715, supra, at 15844-15862. They deprive state commissions of methodological leeway. Their ratesetting instructions grant a state commission little or no freedom to choose among reasonable rate-determining methods according to the State's policy-related judgments, assessing local economic circumstance or community need. I grant the fact that the rules leave it to the state commissions to fix the actual rate, but that is rather like giving a restaurant
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