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Page Number: 29

24 

BIDEN v. NEBRASKA 

Opinion of the Court 

provision of government benefits.”  Reply Brief 21.  In the 
Government’s  view,  “there  are  fewer  reasons  to  be  con-
cerned”  in  cases  involving  benefits,  which  do  not  impose 
“profound  burdens”  on  individual  rights  or  cause  “regula-
tory  effects  that  might  prompt  a  note  of  caution  in  other 
contexts involving exercises of emergency powers.”  Tr. of 
Oral Arg. 61. 

This Court has never drawn the line the Secretary sug-
gests—and  for  good  reason.    Among  Congress’s  most  im-
portant authorities is its control of the purse.  U. S. Const., 
Art. I, §9, cl. 7; see also Office of Personnel Management v. 
Richmond,  496  U. S.  414,  427  (1990)  (the  Appropriations 
Clause is “a most useful and salutary check upon profusion
and extravagance” (internal quotation marks omitted)).  It 
would be odd to think that separation of powers concerns 
evaporate  simply  because  the  Government  is  providing 
monetary benefits rather than imposing obligations.  As we 
observed  in  West  Virginia,  experience  shows  that  major 
questions cases “have arisen from all corners of the admin-
istrative state,” and administrative action resulting in the 
conferral of benefits is no exception to that rule.  597 U. S., 
at ___ (slip op., at 17).  In  King v. Burwell, 576 U. S. 473 
(2015),  we  declined  to  defer  to  the  Internal  Revenue  Ser-
vice’s interpretation of a healthcare statute, explaining that 
the provision at issue affected “billions of dollars of spend-
ing each year and . . . the price of health insurance for mil-
lions of people.”  Id., at 485.  Because the interpretation of
the provision was “a question of deep ‘economic and political 
significance’ that is central to [the] statutory scheme,” we 
said,  we  would  not  assume  that  Congress  entrusted  that 
task to an agency without a clear statement to that effect. 
Ibid. (quoting Utility Air, 573 U. S., at 324).  That the stat-
ute at issue involved government benefits made no differ-
ence in King, and it makes no difference here. 

All this leads us to conclude that “[t]he basic and conse-
quential  tradeoffs”  inherent  in  a  mass  debt  cancellation