Cite as: 529 U. S. 765 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
armed force of the United States" with the current "[a]ny person." 31 U. S. C. § 3729(a).12
Several features of the current statutory scheme further support the conclusion that States are not subject to qui tam liability. First, another section of the FCA, 31 U. S. C. § 3733, which enables the Attorney General to issue civil investigative demands to "any person . . . possessi[ng] information relevant to a false claims law investigation," § 3733(a)(1),
12 The dissent claims that "[t]he term 'person' in § 3729(a) that we are interpreting today was enacted by the 1986 Congress, not by the 1863 Congress." Post, at 794, n. 5. But the term "person" has remained in the statute unchanged since 1863; the 1986 amendment merely changed the modifier "[a]" to "[a]ny." This no more caused the word "person" to include States than did the replacement of the word "any" with "[a]" four years earlier. The dissent's sole basis for giving the change from "[a]" to "[a]ny" this precise and unusual consequence is a single sentence of legislative history from the 1986 Congress. That would be unequal to the task in any event, but as it happens the sentence was not even describing the consequence of the proposed revision, but was setting forth a Senate Committee's (erroneous) understanding of the meaning of the statutory term enacted some 123 years earlier. The paragraph in which the sentence appears discusses the FCA "[i]n its present," i. e., pre-1986, "form." S. Rep. No. 99-345, p. 8 (1986). The dissent contradicts its contention that the "intent" of the 1986 Congress, rather than that of the 1863 Congress, controls here, by relying heavily on a House Committee Report from 1862. Post, at 791-792 (citing H. R. Rep. No. 2, 37th Cong., 2d Sess., pt. ii-a, pp. xxxviii-xxxix (1862)). Even for those disposed to allow the meaning of a statute to be determined by a single committee, that Report is utterly irrelevant, since it was not prepared in connection with the 1863 Act, or indeed in connection with any proposed false claims legislation. In repeating the Second Circuit's unsupported assertion that Congress must have had this Report in mind a year later when it enacted the FCA, the dissent asks us to indulge even a greater suspension of disbelief than legislative history normally requires. And finally, this irrelevant committee Report does not provide the promised support for the view that "[t]he False Claims Act is . . . as capable of being violated by state as by individual action," post, at 791. The cited portion details a single incident of fraud by a state official against a State, not an incident of fraud by a State against the Federal Government.
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