Cite as: 540 U. S. 526 (2004)
Opinion of the Court
the trustee under § 327 to be eligible for compensation. The Court of Appeals acknowledged that its holding deepened the divide among the various Circuits, but held fast to the statute's plain language, "particularly because application of that plain language supports a reasonable interpretation of the Bankruptcy Code," id., at 745. We granted the petition for certiorari, 538 U. S. 905 (2003), and now resolve the issue.
II
Petitioner argues that the existing statutory text is ambiguous and so requires us to consult legislative history to determine whether Congress intended to allow fees for services rendered by a debtor's attorney in a Chapter 7 proceeding, where that attorney is not authorized under § 327. He makes the case for ambiguity, for the most part, by comparing the present statute with its predecessor. Thus, he says the statute is ambiguous because subsection (A)'s "attorney" is "facially irreconcilable" with the section's first part since
"[e]ither Congress inadvertently omitted the 'debtor's attorney' from the 'payees' list, on which the court of appeals relied, or it inadvertently retained the reference to the attorney in the latter, 'payees' list." Brief for Petitioner 17.
Similarly, with respect to the missing conjunction "or" he says,
"[t]here is no apparent reason, other than a drafting error, that Congress would have rewritten the statute to produce a grammatically incorrect provision." Ibid.
This is the analysis followed by the Courts of Appeals that hold the statute is ambiguous. See In re Top Grade Sausage, supra, at 129 (noting in its search for ambiguity that "[p]rior to amendment, it was undisputed that the repetition of officers in § 330(a)(1)(A) was meant to parallel the officers
533
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