538
Opinion of the Court
prevent a debtor from engaging counsel before a Chapter 7 conversion and paying reasonable compensation in advance to ensure that the filing is in order. Indeed, the Code anticipates these arrangements. See, e. g., § 329 (debtors' attorneys must disclose fees they receive from a debtor in the year prior to its bankruptcy filing and courts may order excessive payments returned to the estate).
C
Petitioner's argument stumbles on still harder ground in the face of another canon of interpretation. His interpretation of the Act—reading the word "attorney" in § 330(a) (1)(A) to refer to "debtors' attorneys" in § 330(a)(1)—would have us read an absent word into the statute. That is, his argument would result "not [in] a construction of [the] statute, but, in effect, an enlargement of it by the court, so that what was omitted, presumably by inadvertence, may be included within its scope." Iselin v. United States, 270 U. S. 245, 251 (1926). With a plain, nonabsurd meaning in view, we need not proceed in this way. "There is a basic difference between filling a gap left by Congress' silence and rewriting rules that Congress has affirmatively and specifically enacted." Mobil Oil Corp. v. Higginbotham, 436 U. S. 618, 625 (1978).
Our unwillingness to soften the import of Congress' chosen words even if we believe the words lead to a harsh outcome is longstanding. It results from "deference to the supremacy of the Legislature, as well as recognition that Congressmen typically vote on the language of a bill." United States v. Locke, 471 U. S. 84, 95 (1985) (citing Richards v. United States, 369 U. S. 1, 9 (1962)).
Adhering to conventional doctrines of statutory interpretation, we hold that § 330(a)(1) does not authorize compensation awards to debtors' attorneys from estate funds, unless they are employed as authorized by § 327. If the attorney is to be paid from estate funds under § 330(a)(1) in a Chapter
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