Opinion ID: 216353
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Were Funds Available for Full Payment of Contract-Support Costs?

Text: Plaintiffs' principal argument is not predicated on the Secretary's alleged contract authority to bind the government to pay contract-support costs in full. Rather, they contend that sufficient appropriations were available to pay each individual tribal organization's contract-support costs in full, so the government cannot escape liability by relying on the insufficiency of appropriations to pay the total of such costs for all tribal organizations. Aplt. Br. at 1. Before addressing the decisions relied upon by Plaintiffs, I would note two classic Supreme Court opinions on the enforceability of unfunded contracts. They establish that a contractual subject-to-availability provision ordinarily forecloses recovery of otherwise promised payment in excess of appropriations; that is, by agreeing that payment is subject to the availability of appropriations, the contractor accepts the risk of congressional underfunding. Bradley v. United States, 98 U.S. 104, 25 L.Ed. 105 (1878), concerned the lease of a building for government use. In accordance with statutes barring federal agencies from entering into contracts for amounts exceeding appropriations, see id. at 107-08, the three-year lease stated that it was subject to an appropriation by Congress for the payment of the rental herein stipulated for, and that no payment shall be made to [Bradley] on account of such rental until such appropriation shall be available, id. at 105-06 (internal quotation marks omitted). During the first two full years of the lease term, Congress appropriated $4,200, the full contract price, specifically for the lease; but in the last year it appropriated only $1,800. See id. at 108 (the first-year appropriation also included rental for the first three weeks of the lease, which were in the prior fiscal year). The Court rejected the claim for the balance by Bradley's successor. It said that the parties' intent, as evidenced by the lease's availability provision, was that the lessor would not be paid until appropriations became available. See id. at 112. That provision placed the underfunding risk on the lessor: Public officers, . . . having no funds in the treasury and being without authority to bind the United States, can only agree to pay the stipulated rental, provided the money is appropriated by Congress, and if the lessor, voluntarily and without any misrepresentation or deception, enters into a lease on those terms, he must rely upon the justice of Congress. Id. at 117. Sutton v. United States, 256 U.S. 575, 41 S.Ct. 563, 65 L.Ed. 1099 (1921), teaches a similar lesson. The government contracted with the Hillsboro Dredging Company (whose assets were later assigned to Sutton as bankruptcy trustee) to conduct dredging and excavation work for a harbor-improvement project. See id. at 577, 41 S.Ct. 563. Hillsboro was to be paid at unit rates. See id. Congress appropriated $23,000 for the project. See id. The appropriation was ample to defray the cost at [the agreed-on unit] rates, assuming that the quantities of material to be removed did not greatly exceed the estimates presented by the specifications. Id. A statute limited the government's contractual obligations to the amount of appropriations. See id. at 579, 41 S.Ct. 563 (`No act of Congress hereafter passed shall be construed to authorize the execution of a contract involving the payment of money in excess of appropriations made by law, unless such act shall in specific terms declare an appropriation to be made or that a contract may be executed.' (quoting 34 Stat. 697, 764 (1906); ellipses omitted)). Accordingly, the contract provided that within the limits of available funds the United States reserves the right to require the removal of such yardage as will complete the work, be it more or less than the quantities above estimated. Id. at 577, 41 S.Ct. 563 (ellipses and internal quotation marks omitted). When it was discovered that the government inspector had underestimated the amount of work performed, work was halted. See id. But by that time the amount owed at unit rates substantially exceeded the congressional appropriation. See id. Sutton sued for the balance. See id. at 578, 41 S.Ct. 563. The Court held that the contractor cannot recover for work done in excess of the appropriation. Id. at 581, 41 S.Ct. 563. The Secretary of War was . . . without power to make a contract binding the government to pay more than the amount appropriated. Those dealing with him must be held to have had notice of the limitations upon his authority. Id. at 579, 41 S.Ct. 563. Plaintiffs argue that Bradley and Sutton are distinguishable because they concern only restricted single-purpose appropriations in which Congress has designate[d] a specifically-appropriated sum for a given undertaking. Aplt. Br. at 28. This case, they say, concerns instead a lump-sum appropriation[], id., which, although capped at some level, is without limitation available for multiple projects or contractors. . . and is thus `unrestricted,' id. at 30. They contend that [i]n the lump-sum situation . . ., an agency's exhaustion of an appropriation without fully paying the contract at issue . . . does not bar the contractor from recovering damages for the non-payment. Id. at 26-27 (emphasis omitted). In other words, the government may be held liable for failing to pay a contractor in full out of an appropriation sufficient to pay that contractor, even though the appropriation is insufficient to pay all of the contracts the agency has made. Id. at 27. For support of their position, Plaintiffs rely in part on the Supreme Court's decision in Cherokee Nation, 543 U.S. 631, 125 S.Ct. 1172, which awarded the plaintiffs in that case their full contract-support costs for ISDA contracts with the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). I will discuss Cherokee Nation more fully later. For now, suffice it to say that the holding in that case is not helpful to Plaintiffs' argument. True, the contracts were, as here, subject to the availability of appropriations. See id. at 640-41, 125 S.Ct. 1172, And, as here, the government argued that Congress did not appropriate enough money to cover the full contract-support costs for all ISDA contracts. See id. at 636, 125 S.Ct. 1172. But unlike our case, the appropriations acts had not used restrictive not-to-exceed language with respect to contract-support costs. (The acts were like the pre-1994 BIA appropriations acts.) Thus, the HHS Secretary's contract-support spending was not statutorily restricted. And because there were sufficient unrestricted funds (in addition to the funds specifically appropriated for contract-support costs) available to cover the contract-support costs on the HHS Secretary's ISDA contracts with the plaintiffs, the Court held that the subject-to-availability provision did not limit the government's liability. See id. at 643, 125 S.Ct. 1172 (Since Congress appropriated adequate unrestricted funds here, [the] phrase [`subject to the availability of appropriations'], if interpreted as ordinarily understood, would not help the Government.). To be sure, Plaintiffs here rely not just on the holding in Cherokee Nation but also on some of the Court's language regarding the government's liability on contracts paid for out of lump-sum appropriations. Before I turn to that language, however, it will be helpful first to analyze other relevant case law and to review the specific context of the dispute before us. Most helpful to Plaintiffs is the holding in a lower-court decision cited with approval by Cherokee Nation. In summarizing propositions not disputed by the parties in that case, the Supreme Court cited Ferris v. United States, 27 Ct.Cl. 542, 546 (1892), for its statement that [a] contractor who is one of several persons to be paid out of an appropriation is not chargeable with knowledge of its administration, nor can his legal rights be affected or impaired by its maladministration or by its diversion, whether legal or illegal, to other objects. Cherokee Nation, 543 U.S. at 637-38, 125 S.Ct. 1172. Plaintiffs argue that under this Ferris doctrine, each tribal organization is entitled to full payment of its contract-support costs because the congressional appropriation for contract-support costs was many times greater than their individual amounts, and it is irrelevant to any particular tribal organization that the Secretary may have overcommitted the total appropriation by entering into other contracts. In my view, however, this argument takes Ferris too far. Ferris considered a contract between the government and Ferris to dredge 100,-000 cubic yards of material from the Delaware River. See 27 Ct.Cl. at 542-43, 545. When the contract was executed, the agency allotted to it $37,000 out of a congressional appropriation for improvement of the river. See id. at 542-43. But the government halted work when only 35,494 cubic yards of material had been removed because the appropriation had been exhausted. See id. at 545-46. Ferris was fully paid $9,500 for the work performed; but he sought lost profits for the work that he was prevented from performing by the order to stop. See id. at 543, 545-46. The court awarded him $6,510 in damages. See id. at 547. Exhaustion of appropriated funds, it explained, justified the officer in charge, but does not justify the [government] in not providing funds for carrying out and discharging [its] legal obligations. A contractor who is one of several persons to be paid out of an appropriation is not chargeable with knowledge of its administration, nor can his legal rights be affected or impaired by its maladministration or by its diversion, whether legal or illegal, to other objects. An appropriation per se merely imposes limitations upon the Government's own agents; it is a definite amount of money intrusted to them for distribution; but its insufficiency does not pay the Government's debts, nor cancel its obligations, nor defeat the rights of other parties. Id. at 546 (emphasis added). This quoted proposition might appear to control the result here. After all, each tribal organization executing an ISDA contract would know that the congressional appropriation for contract-support costs was far more than sufficient to cover those costs for its own contract, and the organization would not be chargeable with knowledge of [the] administration [of that appropriation], nor c[ould] [its] legal rights be affected or impaired . . . by its diversion. . . to other objects. Id. But one must not read too much into Ferris. It is, in essence, simply a case about contract interpretation. The legality of the contract was not at issue. Nor was there any doubt that the officer in charge was forbidden from making additional payments to Ferris once the appropriation was exhausted; the court noted that the officer was justified in stopping the work. Id. The sole question was the extent to which the government was bound on its contract with Ferris. To answer that question, courts follow the dictum that [w]hen the United States enters into contract relations, its rights and duties therein are governed generally by the law applicable to contracts between private individuals. Franconia Assocs. v. United States, 536 U.S. 129, 141, 122 S.Ct. 1993, 153 L.Ed.2d 132 (2002) (internal quotation marks omitted). Context, of course, is critical in interpreting contracts. What Ferris said is that in the circumstances of that case, where the government contracted to pay for certain work and sufficient funds to pay for the work had been appropriated (and even allocated to the contract), then the contractor could take the contractual promise as binding; the contractor did not need to worry about whether the funds would be reallocated while it was performing the contract. This would have been a reasonable assumption by the parties; and ordinarily it would be a reasonable construction of such a contract even if it contained subject-to-availability-of-appropriations language. See Cherokee Nation, 543 U.S. at 637, 125 S.Ct. 1172. In other contexts, however, a court could properly interpret similar language differently. The effect of context is well-illustrated by the opinion of the Court of Claims in Blackhawk Heating & Plumbing Co. v. United States, 622 F.2d 539 (Ct.Cl. 1980), an opinion cited repeatedly by the Supreme Court in Cherokee Nation. It is worthwhile to describe Blackhawk in detail. The case concerned an agreement between the Veterans Administration (VA) and a contractor to resolve a dispute regarding cost overruns for construction of a hospital. See id. at 541. The parties settled on a compromise payment of $10.3 million. See id. The amount was to be paid in two installments: $8 million within 40 days of settlement, and $2.3 million within 90 days of settlement. See id. at 544. To pay the settlement, the VA needed to transfer (reprogram) funds that had been earmarked for other projects. See id. at 542. This was done, and the VA then sent letters notifying some congressional committees (those involved in VA appropriations) of the reprogramming. See id. at 543. But several members of Congress, after reviewing a GAO report on the settlement, wrote to the VA expressing concern about the payments. See id. at 544. When the VA decided to go forward with the settlement anyway, Congress enacted legislation retroactively barring any VA settlements exceeding $1 million absent an independent audit (which had not been prepared for the Blackhawk settlement), although the conference report on the legislation agreed that up to $6 million could be advanced on settlements that predated the law's effective date. See id. at 544-45. The law was enacted on January 3, 1974; and on the same day the VA paid $6 million of the initial $8 million installment required by the settlement, about three weeks after it was due. See id. at 543, 545. The VA made no further payments. See id. at 546. Blackhawk sued the VA for the unpaid settlement amounts plus interest. See id. The lawsuit turned on the meaning of Article 8 of the agreement, which stated: The Government's obligation hereunder is contingent upon the availability of appropriated funds from which payment in full can be made. Id. at 542 (internal quotation marks omitted). The parties agreed on the meaning to some extent. They both thought that Article 8 at least made the agreement contingent on the VA's reprogramming funds initially earmarked for other construction purposes, although it was everyone's understanding that the contingency was highly likely to occur. See id. at 542-43, 546-47. The VA contended, however, that Article 8 further limited its liability in two ways: (1) its obligation was contingent on approval of the reprogramming by congressional committees notified of it beforehand, see id. at 546-47, and (2) it was conditioned on there being no affirmative action by the Congress that would prevent the [VA] from paying, id. at 550. After examining the relevant statutory and regulatory framework, the parties' course of dealing, and communications between the parties, the court disagreed with the VA on the first limitation but agreed on the second. In rejecting the VA's claim that Article 8 made payment to the contractors conditional on approval of reprogramming by the pertinent congressional committees, the court observed that no statute required such approval, no VA regulation stated that reprogramming would not go forward without congressional-committee consent, and no practice or policy of the VA prohibited unconsented-to programming. The court said that notification to the committees was merely a courtesy to maintain good relations with Congress. Moreover, it found that no one representing the VA had ever told Blackhawk that committee approval was necessary for reprogramming, and in none of the prior settlement agreements between Blackhawk and the VA had committee approval of reprogramming been raised as a consideration. See id. at 547-50. As for the VA's contention that Article 8 made payment conditional on Congress's not acting to prevent payment, the court found the issue a close one, but sided with the VA. Crucial to this conclusion was evidence of what happened at the meeting to execute the settlement. At the meeting a VA attorney mentioned that Article 8 would limit the government's liability should Congress affirmatively prevent the agency from paying. See id. at 543. To this statement the contractor merely shrugged and said nothing. See id. The parties then signed the agreement. See id. The court said that the contractor's shrug was both an acknowledgment of understanding and a dismissal of concern. Id. at 551. The court's ultimate ruling gave each party a partial victory. Article 8 relieved the VA of liability on the second installment of $2.3 million, which came due after Congress enacted the legislation limiting the VA's settlement payments; but the VA remained liable on the balance of the first installment of $8 million because it came due before the legislative enactment, when the agency had funds available with which to pay. See id. at 552-53. For present purposes, the lesson of Blackhawk is that the court did not confine its analysis to the abstract meaning of contingent upon the availability of appropriated funds; it construed the language in light of the relevant statutes and (nonexistent) regulations, the policies and practices of the agency, and the communications between the parties. Adopting this perspective, I now turn to Plaintiffs' ISDA contracts. First, consider the statutory context. As discussed above, congressional enactments alerted tribal organizations to the likelihood of shortfalls. The appropriation for every pertinent year set an upper limit on what could be provided for contract-support costs. Whereas in Ferris the government presumably could have avoided overcommitting its limited appropriation by refusing to execute additional contracts, the Secretary had no such discretion. The ISDA requires the Secretary (1) to approve all tribal requests to execute ISDA contracts (unless certain narrow statutory grounds justify refusal), see 25 U.S.C. § 450f(a)(1), (2); and (2) to pay (subject to the availability of appropriations) the full amount of contract-support costs for each such contract, see id. § 450j-1(a)(2), (b). Because the amount of contract-support costs was thus a matter over which the Secretary had essentially no control, the only purpose for capping those costs would be to reduce them below what would otherwise be required by the ISDA. Moreover, the Secretary gave tribal organizations repeated official notices that the restricted appropriations for contract-support costs had not been adequate and were expected to be inadequate for full funding, so that contingency plans had been made regarding how to apportion funds if they turned out to be inadequate. An annual notice in the Federal Register advised that the BIA would need to determine whether the appropriated funds for contract support would suffice to pay contract-support costs for all ISDA contracts and, if not, the BIA would pay only a pro rata portion of the costs. Every contracting organization well knew that its contract-support costs had not been paid in full for the prior year; and the notices would have had scant purpose had the BIA expected the appropriation to be adequate. Thus, unlike Ferris, the tribal organizations knew what to expect. I am not saying that giving notice can by itself relieve an agency of an obligation to pay. If the money is there, the agency must pay, as in Cherokee Nation. Rather, the point is that if legislation precludes full payment, the contractor cannot rely on Ferris if the contractor has proper notice of the problem. In short, even though a government contractor ordinarily may not be chargeable with knowledge of the administration of the appropriation that funds the contract, it cannot close its eyes to the clear implication of statutory funding restrictions, official information publicly promulgated on the subject, and the historical course of dealing. Whether an appropriation can be viewed as a line item or a lump sum is a relevant part of the context, but only a part. Given the context here, a reasonable person construing the AFAs at issue would understand that the Secretary was promising to pay only the portion of contract-support costs that could be funded by the restricted congressional appropriation for such costs on all ISDA contracts. To be sure, ambiguities in contracts with Indian tribes should be resolved in favor of the tribes. See 25 U.S.C. § 450 l (c) (Model Agreement § 1(a)(2)). But that rule does not apply here because of the clarity of the meaning of subject to the availability of appropriations in the present context. That language means that the government's contract-support-cost obligation is subject to the availability of sufficient appropriations to pay for contract-support costs on all the Secretary's ISDA contracts. My view is supported by three opinions of two other circuits regarding the availability of contract-support costs in light of the not-to-exceed language in the appropriation acts. Two opinions predate Cherokee Nation; but I see nothing in them contrary to the Supreme Court's analysis. And what is most important about the decisions is not so much their ultimate conclusions as their construction of the legislation, which was what I have said would be the reasonable interpretation by a tribal organization entering into an ISDA contract with the BIA. I have already mentioned Ramah Navajo School Board, 87 F.3d 1338. In that opinion the court interpreted the ISDA's subject-to-availability provision to mean that each Tribe had a right only to the amount of CSF [contract-support funding] it would have received under a legal allocation plan. Id. at 1346. It then held that the allocation plan would be legal only if it were pro rata for all tribal organizations. See id. at 1349. It found support in [t]he legislative history of the 1995 Act[, which] indicates that Congress, aware that it had appropriated an insufficient amount for full CSF funding, intended for the agency to deal with the shortfall through a pro rata reduction. Id. I agree that organizations contracting with the Secretary would have understood that none of them would receive full contract-support-cost funding if the restricted appropriation was insufficient to pay full costs for all of them. And, as I said earlier, the plaintiffs in Ramah Navajo School Board so understood the law. See Appellant's Brief at 27, Ramah Navajo Sch. Bd., Inc. v. Babbitt, Nos. 95-5334, 95-5348 (D.C.Cir. Nov. 15, 1995). In Babbitt v. Oglala Sioux Tribal Public Safety Department, 194 F.3d 1374 (Fed. Cir.1999), the court addressed, and rejected, a claim seeking the same relief as in our casefull payment of contract-support costs despite a not-to-exceed appropriation and a subject-to-availability proviso. The plaintiff raised an estoppel argument, asserting that it had detrimentally relied on § 450j-1(g)'s entitlement language. But the court said that it was unreasonable for the plaintiff to expect full payment of indirect contract-support costs because the subject-to-availability provisos in § 450j-1(b) and the model contract unequivocally informed it otherwise. See id. at 1380. The third opinion, of course, is Arctic Slope Native Assn'n, Ltd. v. Sebellius, 629 F.3d 1296 (Fed.Cir.2010). In a thoughtful opinion by the court most conversant with federal contract law, the identical issue raised in this case was resolved in favor of the government. In sum, I conclude that in the context of the appropriation statutes for the years in question, the ISDA, and the parties' course of dealing, the subject-to-availability language of Plaintiffs' ISDA contracts meant that the contract-support costs for each would need to be reduced if the appropriation for contract-support costs was inadequate to pay such costs on all ISDA contracts. I disagree with Plaintiffs' contention that the Cherokee Nation opinion requires otherwise. In that case the plaintiffs successfully sued for full payment of their contract-support costs for ISDA contracts with the Indian Health Service (IHS) (under the HHS Secretary) for fiscal years 1994 through 1997. See Cherokee Nation, 543 U.S. at 634, 125 S.Ct. 1172. Congress had appropriated between $1.277 billion and $1.419 billion each year for the IHS to carry out the ISDA. Id. at 637, 125 S.Ct. 1172 (internal quotation marks omitted). These appropriation Acts contained no relevant statutory restrictions, id., in contrast to appropriations to the BIA for ISDA purposes during those years, which contained caps on contract-support funding. As Plaintiffs read Cherokee Nation, it stands for the proposition that because the appropriation for contract-support costs was more than adequate to pay those costs for any particular tribal organization, the subject-to-availability requirement was satisfied for each individual contract and the government is liable. But, as I have previously noted, Cherokee Nation does not so hold. In that case the available funds sufficed to pay the total of contract-support costs for all contracts at issue. I must acknowledge, however, that the Cherokee Nation opinion did endorse the general proposition (which, the Court observed, the government had not contested) relied on by Plaintiffsthat as long as Congress has appropriated sufficient legally unrestricted funds to pay the contracts at issue, the Government normally cannot back out of a promise to pay on grounds of `insufficient appropriations,' even if the contract uses language such as `subject to the availability of appropriations,' and even if an agency's total lump-sum appropriation is insufficient to pay all the contracts the agency has made. Id. Accordingly, said the Court, the government was bound in that case unless it could show something special about the promises . . . at issue, id. at 638, 125 S.Ct. 1172, keeping in mind the importance of provid[ing] a uniform interpretation of . . . language [similar to `subject to the availability of appropriations'], lest legal uncertainty undermine contractors' confidence that they will be paid, and in turn increase the cost to the Government of purchasing goods and services, id. at 644, 125 S.Ct. 1172. But what compels a different outcome here is the presence of something special, id. at 638, 125 S.Ct. 1172, that was not present in Cherokee Nation namely, the context discussed at length above to show that tribal organizations must have understood that caps in the appropriation acts could (and almost certainly would) require a percentage reduction in payment of contract-support costs. Recall that the ISDA does not give the Secretary discretion to refuse to enter into an ISDA contract or to refuse to pay contract-support costs. Thus, the language of the annual appropriations acts that set a limit on the funds available for contract-support costs could have no purpose other than to require underpayment of contract-support costs in ISDA contracts. And because the Secretary could not beggar one tribal organization (by reducing its contract-support costs) to pay the full contract-support costs for another organization, see 25 U.S.C. § 450j-1(b) ([T]he Secretary is not required to reduce funding for programs, projects, or activities serving a tribe to make funds available to another tribe or tribal organization under [the ISDA].), Congress must have contemplated a reduction for all tribal organizations. Indeed, if we were to apply to the present context the Ferris doctrine as interpreted by Plaintiffs, the dollar limitations in the appropriations acts would be empty gestures. Because the government would still owe full contract-support costs on each ISDA contract, the caps would be irrelevant. We should refrain from interpreting statutory language in a way that renders it impotent. See Fed. Trade Comm'n v. Accusearch, Inc., 570 F.3d 1187, 1198 (10th Cir.2009) (Under a long-standing canon of statutory interpretation, one should avoid construing a statute so as to render statutory language superfluous. (internal quotation marks omitted)). I would adopt the more natural interpretation of the statutory scheme, which, as noted above, has been adopted in three other circuit opinions and even endorsed by the plaintiffs in one of the cases. Moreover, Cherokee Nation does not preclude my interpretation. On the contrary, the discussion in that opinion of several arguments made by the government suggests that the Court was unwilling to endorse the rigid view of Ferris adopted by Plaintiffs herenamely, that so long as the appropriation for contract-support costs was greater than the amount of such costs in an individual ISDA contract, the subject-to-availability condition is not triggered and the government is liable. If Cherokee Nation had, as Plaintiffs contend, embraced their view of Ferris, it would have been unnecessary for the Court to address those arguments by the government; after all, the Ferris doctrine, as understood by Plaintiffs, would have guaranteed the Cherokee Nation's victory regardless of the merits of the other arguments. It is therefore instructive to examine some of the grounds on which the Court rejected the government's arguments against applying the general Ferris rule in that case, because the things that the Court found missing in Cherokee Nation are present here. First, in concluding that ISDA contracts should be treated like ordinary procurement contracts, the Court wrote that it had found no indication that Congress believed or accepted the Government's current claim that, because of mutual self-awareness among tribal contractors, tribes, not the Government, should bear the risk that an unrestricted lump-sum appropriation would prove insufficient to pay all contractors. Cherokee Nation, 543 U.S. at 640, 125 S.Ct. 1172 (emphasis added). Here, however, we confront restricted lump-sum appropriations that set a maximum expenditure for contract-support costs; and, perhaps more importantly, the context (as I have previously explained) unambiguously shows that Congress intended, and the tribal organizations were on notice and understood, that the restriction would reduce the contract-support costs to which each was otherwise entitled, thereby imposing on them the risk of an inadequate appropriation. Second, the Court rejected the government's reliance on the language in § 450j-1(b) that the Secretary is not required to reduce funding for programs, projects, or activities serving a tribe to make funds available to another tribe or tribal organization under [the ISDA], because no such reduction was necessary. The Court observed that the plaintiff tribes' claims could be paid out of unrestricted funds that had gone for government, not tribal, operations. See id. at 641-42, 125 S.Ct. 1172. In stark contrast, here the funds necessary to pay one tribal organization's contract-support costs in full would have to come from money that would otherwise go to another contractor because of the appropriations cap on contract-support costs. Third, the Court rejected the government's argument that the subject-to-availability language of § 450j-1(b) gave the Secretary authority . . . to adjust funding levels based on appropriations; it observed that the government could point to no supporting statutory language and that the legislative history merely showed that Executive Branch officials would have liked to exercise discretionary authority to allocate a lump-sum appropriation too small to pay for all the contracts that the Government had entered into[, but] the history does not show that Congress granted such authority. Id. at 643-44, 125 S.Ct. 1172 (internal quotation marks omitted). True, the appropriations caps in this case likewise do not confer discretion on the Secretary. But what the Secretary sought discretion to do in Cherokee Nation is compelled here. The Secretary is forbidden to use for contract support any funds in the BIA lump-sum appropriations above the capped amounts. Fourth, and finally, the Court said that the government could not rely on a 1999 statute setting limits on contract-support costs based on earlier committee reports. The statute said: Notwithstanding any other provision of law the amounts appropriated to or earmarked in committee reports for the Indian Health Service for payments to tribes for contract support costs are the total amounts available for fiscal years 1994 through 1998 for such purposes. Id. at 645, 125 S.Ct. 1172 (brackets, ellipses, emphasis, and internal quotation marks omitted). The Court said that it would be reasonable to interpret this language to forbid payment to the plaintiff tribes; but it adopted another interpretation to avoid construing the statute as having a retroactive effect. In the case before us, however, restrictions in the appropriations acts are not being applied retroactively. To be sure, Cherokee Nation does not definitively endorse the government's position in this case. But it certainly did not adopt Plaintiffs' position, either. If it had, the Supreme Court could have short-circuited much of its discussion by simply saying that the government's arguments were beside the point, because even granting all those arguments, there was certainly a sufficient appropriation to pay the contract-support costs of any single tribal organization. As just one example, it would not have had to decide whether to interpret the 1999 statute to apply retroactively, because the plaintiffs in that case would have prevailed anyway. Accordingly, I reject Plaintiffs' contention that language in Cherokee Nation, even if not the holding, compels judgment in their favor. I now turn to Plaintiffs' two remaining arguments that their ISDA contracts require full payment of their contract-support costs. One argument is that their ISDA contracts incorporate the provisions of the ISDA; and because the ISDA requires full payment of contract-support costs, each contract does so as well. I reject this argument because, as already explained at length, the ISDA does not require full payment. Full payment is conditioned on the availability of funds. See 25 U.S.C. §§ 450j(c)(1), 450j-1(b). Plaintiffs' other argument is that their construction of the ISDA contracts is compelled by an admission in a government brief in another case. The issue in Southern Ute Indian Tribe v. Leavitt, 497 F.Supp.2d 1245 (D.N.M.2007), was whether the IHS could be compelled to enter into a new ISDA contract with the Southern Utes even though all funds appropriated for contract-support costs for the year had already been contractually committed. In a brief filed on December 19, 2005, the government made the following statements: (1) [T]he issue here is whether IHS is potentially liable for contract support costs once it signs on the dotted line. Given the decision in Cherokee [ Nation, ] IHS at a minimum was reasonable in its belief that by entering a new self-determination contract with plaintiff, it might be implicitly promising to pay contract support costs in excess of Congressional appropriations, J.App., Vol. VII at 1670 (Reply in Support of Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment at 6, Southern Ute, 497 F.Supp.2d 1245); (2) According to the [Supreme] Court [in Cherokee Nation, ] the language [of 25 U.S.C. § 450 l (c) (Model Agreement § 1(b)(4))] gave IHS `no legal right to disregard its contractual promises,' even in the absence of available appropriations, id. at 4; and (3) Thus, contrary to [Southern Ute's] claim, defendants might be held liable for plaintiff's contract support costs despite the inclusion of the [subject-to-availability] clause in their contract, id. Plaintiffs contend that these statements amount to an admission that their interpretation of their ISDA contracts is plausible, even reasonable, and that therefore we must adopt that interpretation because of the rule that we interpret ambiguities in ISDA contracts in favor of the tribes. See 25 U.S.C. § 450 l (c) (Model Agreement § 1(a)(2)). I disagree. The contract-interpretation issue in Southern Ute was quite distinct from what confronts us. The context of the dispute was as follows: The IHS had informed the Southern Utes that there were no more funds available for contract-support costs. See Southern Ute, 497 F.Supp.2d at 1248-49. The IHS was willing to enter into a contract with the tribe for new services but only if the tribe waived its rights to contract-support costs. See id. at 1250. The tribe refused to execute a waiver. See id. The question then became whether the IHS could therefore refuse to enter into a contract with the tribe. See id. at 1252. The IHS was concerned that its executing the standard contract in that context would amount to a binding promise to pay contract-support costs despite the absence of appropriated funds to pay for those costs. See id. The quoted statements from the government's brief were to explain why the IHS was concerned. In my view, the context of the contract-interpretation issue before us is sufficiently different that nothing in the government's Southern Ute brief amounts to a concession of ambiguity regarding our issue.