Page:United States Reports 546.pdf/356

 546US1

Unit: $U13

[08-22-08 15:36:16] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 546 U. S. 142 (2005)

145

Opinion of the Court

ment of various student loans, including the loans at issue here, § 1091a(a)(2)(D). The Higher Education Technical Amendments, by their terms, did not make Social Security beneﬁts subject to off­ set; these were still protected by the Social Security Act’s anti-attachment rule. Only in 1996 did the Debt Collection Improvement Act—in amending and recodifying the Debt Collection Act—provide that, “[n]otwithstanding any other provision of law (including [§ 407] . . . ),” with a limited ex­ ception not relevant here, “all payment due an individual under. . . the Social Security Act. . . shall be subject to offset under this section.” 31 U. S. C. § 3716(c)(3)(A)(i). II The Government does not contend that the “notwithstand­ ing” clauses in both the Higher Education Technical Amend­ ments and the Debt Collection Improvement Act trump the Social Security Act’s express-reference provision. Cf. Mar­ cello v. Bonds, 349 U. S. 302, 310 (1955) (“Exemptions from the terms of the . . . Act are not lightly to be presumed in view of the statement . . . that modiﬁcations must be ex­ press[.] But . . . [u]nless we are to require the Congress to employ magical passwords in order to effectuate an exemp­ tion from the . . . Act, we must hold that the present statute expressly supersedes the . . . provisions of that Act”); Great Northern R. Co. v. United States, 208 U. S. 452, 465 (1908). We need not decide the effect of express-reference provi­ sions such as § 407(b) to resolve this case. Because the Debt Collection Improvement Act clearly makes Social Security beneﬁts subject to offset, it provides exactly the sort of ex­ press reference that the Social Security Act says is necessary to supersede the anti-attachment provision. It is clear that the Higher Education Technical Amend­ ments remove the 10-year limit that would otherwise bar offsetting petitioner’s Social Security beneﬁts to pay off his student loan debt. Petitioner argues that Congress could