portion of the annual snap or food stamp appropriation and spend it on t v back in two thousand and fourteen congress amended this section to increase the fraction that is spent on t v that the dispute in this case is about how much was that increase the structure of the tax and the purpose of the statute all show that the increase was at least two hundred fifty million dollars more than u s d a has been spending on it i'd like to start the structural point because i think that's where the government's brief seems to disagree with us the some paragraphs eight b c d and e and if your honour's want to follow along it's on page three hundred four of the blue brief where we show those sort of before and after after the amendment so paragraph eighty c d s five so paragraphs are all independent spending cover a single pixel year and other them cover many fiscal years but the point remains that they are all spending instructions now in for for these fiscal years fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen they are repeated in  is is listed only in d c so if that amount is to be spent do you most require it in c is also a spending instruction it is a spending instruction for nine fiscal years clearly was that before the amendments in two thousand and that simple change of the cutoff date didn't change the function of some aircraft see some of their graphs see still requires an expenditure of funds now the government's theory in this case is that c somehow turns off in fiscal years fifteen through eighteen but there's nothing i see in the text of c or d that actually turns it off in fact with the government's theory is is ultimately contrary to congress's amendment in twenty fourteen that changed the basically support for this because remember congress amended c n d simultaneously congress didn't need to include a reminder at the beginning of d this is he by the way the amount we just told you under see to spend that two hundred fifty you still got to spend that and then in additional fifty million so in your interpretation are you reading deed to me that for each fiscal years twenty fifteen to eighteen comma in addition to the amount in c comma the sum of tain by adding the total amount specified you can see mainly to seventy seven plus it is the amount f absolutely and the government's interpretation is essentially that that language that i added in my question means that you just take c is to seventy seven and you had the fifty million indeed and that's the sum referred to in d so again this is another point the judge leon made below and i think that he's he's confusing two different songs on th following in complying with c and the sum of following complying with d isn't this something that d itself refers to is this gets back to that point that i started with the why is so fundamental tomorrow argument to show that each of these sub her graphs is independent spending duty discharged only by complying with the amount of money that is required under that specific sub her graph so there isn't a need to say in addition to because d itself is an independent spending duty when you do math the math the sum obtained by adding the total dollar amount mentioned in c plus fifty you get three hundred no one asked me why on the back of a wine congress conversions say that's an a singular dollar amount for you just said they are both distinct spending authorizations and my point is that the structurally congress seem to think that there was a single amount in the provisions eleven so why isn't the better thing to read d as pacific in general point a moment as well because i think that's where i want to address but you're not with me on the idea that the total dollar mo is the six hundred four million at c g i and i understand your understand that point but that does essential render all of the introductory fifty in the fifty so they add together now your honor mention the point a moment ago that that there's maybe a general provision in c in a specific provision in the the canon of the specific covering the general doesn't come into play in this case we resort to that when there's a conflict between two provisions and when there's simply a little bit of overlap like there is here where there's four fiscal years that are repeated in c and four fiscal years are repeated in d then the first question is is there a conflict is it think irreconcilably would be what how i understand it you know the words and i was thinking of connecticut national may first germane were the case about your heloc jurisdiction statutes where the supreme court said yeah there's a little bit overlap there's a lot of ways to get in a federal court but the dealing here with we as a court are trying to figure out how much money congress wanted spent and the constitution is quite clear that congress decides what money to stand and so if we were to just fine you know it's not a fifty fifty ambiguity here there's one way to read it quick reading the other one you have whiny and good arguments on both sides is there any sort of went about this way but as the supreme court is that other cases like when you versus us trustee the fact that congress chooses an odd way to publish or result doesn't make it invigorates you could still follow the plain meaning of see you can still follow the plain meaning of d and when you put those together still retain control over the power of the purse and its ability to appropriate funds so in this instance i mean i think these the separation of powers concerning articulating is a valid one but it deals with the sort of subsequent appropriation not with the a increase spending here in a way that reasonably compensated for the amount of money that was being taken away from food stamps and in that kind of a context i think it's you know it makes a little bit more sense that and we display this on the bridge i will go through the whole legislat increase in payments tied to inflation and then even under your purpose theory you have the extra kicker for those years that could cover address your purpose concerns on our new year program we have the center city and then we have this huge bomb well we legislators are acting in a fairly self interested way here and one way to get around cvo scoring is to pack it in massive spending increased as in the first four years of a bill because in the last year congress should be the cvo scores long term spending based on the amount that's in the end so you know the important point about the drop off your honor is that just leon's theory gets us to the most radical drop off of only fifteen million dollars spent on teeth that in twenty  i think the government was sort of responding to the almost absurdity of that by revising its argument on appeal here to try to come up with a theory that essentially says he does no work see no longer is the spending in shropshire after twenty fifteen and as i stated a few moments ago i think that is directly contrary to congress's action in twenty fourteen to amend sub paragraph c and actually extend that cutoff date though the government has a grappled with that in its explanation of the case and i've used a honor that's what congress did in some paragraph it said some these add the two numbers and so it did so in the separate subsection of paragraph b because c was the inflation adjustment for the patient and it made sense to do so for the subset of years which the kicker's applies except all the other a midi cd and e s are independent spending authorizations and so now you're saying d even though it's set up like an independent spending authorization in fact it's not it's compromises involved in the farm bill but we do know from the legislative history that there were significant back and forth about how much to cut snout and therefore how much to increase two thousand i think that is too that the congress intended that to accommodate some of the cuts to the food stamp program that the theory was that that there would be increasing need for  difficult to make any sense of the idea that congress would add fifty million dollars when according to the wire series they added two hundred seventy seven  what i'm having trouble with i simply don't know enough about the farm program and all the other monies that are coming in so that i judge randolph is focusing on scenes odd that maybe it is odd if you look at the total picture and neither group addresses so we're just looking at this one amendment it's been twenty fourteen trying to come up with a language that would support this additional language indeed unprecedented historic levels we would have expected to find some indication of it and not a legislative history your premises based on historical fact which neither brief supports that is unique situation except what we know from the grease is there was a compromise yes between the house and senate and these numbers don't tell us anything about why they chose the number well so both sides say the language is plain doesn't really help when arguably there are  possible and reasonable interpretations of this line which we think there's only one your honor and that conference committee report our problem i have with the government's position and i thought it interesting that the district court and the government ar in sync here brought it's the overlap of the fiscal year that inflation adjustment or the the eight year period but then for a subset to increase it slightly to do so with these overlapping provisions that set out a fixed schedule of  c and then we add in fifty from roman and i yes that's off there and so it functions that's i mean we aren't supposed to let any word be surface tension here we're going to have you know i'm not counting that quickly but twenty words or so being  have to be andy roman of one there's no language that refers to addition and so that work is done by the sentence the introductory sentence has a paragraph d and then you just need one word ad for fiscal year  ad and you need all these other words i mean a plane if you just read c by itself you go right two hundred seventy seven million and then if you read if you randi if the years were different say they were twenty nineteen through something you would go ok that's a separate amount that's another spending authorization spend c and d as an independent spending authorization but not where the two are so are overlapping in the words it no your honor they would if congress wanted to double the amount for each of the fiscal years it would for instance one of the ways it would do it it would make clear that it wanted to double the the inflation adjusted based on amount and had a fixed amount but it doesn't want to do that for her twenty ten through twenty eighteen it only wants to do that for twenty fifteen twenty eighteen so it's still going to have c just as it is and then it's going to say for twenty fifteen or twenty eighteen we want to do something special we want to add more that's what this actually does everyone agrees that the question is how much more you're it's adding them and my concern is actually year and that's just the same as say the you know you have to go down forty and whatever it says do that for twenty fifteen twenty sixteen twenty seven twenty eight to pay that that's an independently operating provision but then you're saying that he doesn't have any  to the schedule set out this is this is the reading that is consistent with with contemporaneous legislative history with the with the subsequent appropriations the c e o score high kind understand all that  there was something to indicate to me that congress understood that the after effects of the two thousand and eight recession were hitting low income people very hard and time goes by but for this first here given the economic problems being experienced around the country we need a big push the first year and that sort of what they wrote and then they said well now that we sort of fill in this gap in the economy is recovering we can taper off as the period go forward your honor if i may add one significant he's a context as explained in our brief the way that the snap the food stamp program in the teeth that program are appropriated it's part of the lump sum so to do that to do what  indicating what those funds are to be used for so it's not as though congress is just saying to the department here's a long sought it expects congress to use the law that stress the agency the what congress might be doing here with this extra like bridge indeed makes some sense to me but the language itself i don't know who what you're doing with the se talking about years twenty ten through twenty eight and then saying but for this three year fiscal period we're going to that are coming to grips with it and what's troubling to me is you have a district court going on way you have the government now on appeal going another way or another i don't think our position is is inconsistent with the district courts not on the bottom line but how years at issue and that that congress and is it congress is in town just plain you are anything in the legislative history that you looked at that supports this hypothesis i raise about the so is that it is true that there is nothing in the legislative history to the farm bill that addresses it's emergency food program in terms of the recession the effects of the recession i just i'm not prepared to speak to that specific point that they have that is what that you haven't found it all or there's more to read that you haven't had a chance to read that the legislative history that that we reviewed focuses on the tradeoffs between snap and teeth but but to your specific point out whether congress used the the agency is that it's not a couple times you said dick congress were doing what they wanted to you would expect them to be clear if nothing clear about the statute but i'm wondering if you have an answer to my question about whether there's any in their role of statutory construction of narrow construction spending authorizations or background presumption that courts should have if they were to come to a statutory language and way of doing what congress intended and in fact the legislative history is abundantly clear everyone agrees the contemporaneous grafters subsequent appropriators we don't look at any of that under your theory i mean it's just the final bill explained why they believe that the food stamp program did not need to be cut should not be cut by eight billion dollars given that the hunger problem and that they were reluctantly supporting the bill because at least they thought congress knew how to rewrite an inflation calculator when i wanted that to be done and did so within the exact same bill and so this case though i think is ultimately one that reinforces the principle that the best evidence of congress's intent is to tax i mean we could speculate we could try to find something legislative get your vote what was going on but it's clear there is a lot of moving parts and this farm bill is hundreds of pages long we're dealing with what comes out big you know a half a page the legislative history is hundreds of pages long the idea that the legislative history reflects the intent of the will of the legislators is i think demonstrably false the question really isn't why congress did this i know we'd like to find a reason why the question is what did congress do because the fact is when you're dealing with numbers that are written in statutes are always a little bit arbitrary whether the number is how long first as your limitations three years four years five years what's the admissions threshold for getting a clean air act permit is that two hundred tons per year or two hundred twenty tons per year i was spending on defense or education and it is the point is when it comes to picking a number in a statute that's congress's sole derogative and what we know to come back i guess to the judge millette point what we know here is that congress every year every year has appropriated eighty billion dollars for the food stamp program of which the delta between our positions is one third of one percent the money is there u s d a as we pointed out in our brief  in the ninth circuit which we brief below that suggests you can plead bowl but you know we think that a p a seven zero six one free agency action on lawful withhold would be an adequate relief in this context and that indeed whether it is a mandamus action or an a p a action doesn't really ultimately affect the result because when an agency like u s d a is acting in a way that is contrary to its mandatory nondiscretionary duty relief is available from a quarter directed to do so so blessed according to the question thank you thank you very much