Cite as: 534 U. S. 84 (2001)
O'Connor, J., dissenting
chapter 35, a Code provision that relates to gambling operations generally, but not to the reporting and withholding of gambling winnings. Ibid.
One of these two changes must have been made in error. There is no reason to assume, however, that it must have been the latter. It is equally likely that Congress intended § 2719(d) to apply chapter 35 to the Nations, but adopted too restrictive a general characterization of the applicable sections.
The Court can do no more than speculate that the bill's drafters included the parenthetical while the original restriction was in place and failed to remove it when that restriction was altered. See ante, at 92. Both the inclusion of the parenthetical and the alteration of the restriction occurred in the Senate committee, S. Rep. No. 100-446 (1988), and there is no way to determine the order in which they were adopted. If the parenthetical was added after the restriction, one could just as easily characterize the restriction as an unintentional holdover from a previous version of the bill.
True, reading the statute to grant the Nations the exemption requires the section's reference to the "reporting and withholding of taxes with respect to the winnings" from gaming operations to sustain a meaning the words themselves cannot bear. But the Court's reading of the statute fares no better: It requires excising from § 2719(d) Congress' explicit reference to chapter 35. This goes beyond treating statutory language as mere surplusage. See Potter v. United States, 155 U. S. 438, 446 (1894) (the presence of statutory language "cannot be regarded as mere surplusage; it means something"); cf. ante, at 89. Surplusage is redundant statutory language, Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter, Communities for Great Ore., 515 U. S. 687, 697-698 (1995); W. Popkin, Materials on Legislation: Political Language and the Political Process 214 (3d ed. 2001)—the Court's reading
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