Opinion of the Court
for Congress to set up such a dichotomy, particularly between (A) and (B). These two provisions are linked: (A) carves out fraudulent “statement[s] respecting the debtor’s or an insider’s financial condition,” while (B) governs such statements that are reduced to writing. In Bartenwerfer’s view, it “defies credulity” to think that Congress would bar debtors from discharging liability for mine-run fraud they did not personally commit while simultaneously allowing debtors to discharge liability for (potentially more serious) fraudulent statements they did not personally make. Brief for Petitioner 23.
But in Field, we offered a possible answer for why (B) contains a more debtor-friendly discharge rule than (A): Congress may have “wanted to moderate the burden on individuals who submitted false financial statements, not because lies about financial condition are less blameworthy than others, but because the relative equities might be affected by practices of consumer finance companies, which sometimes have encouraged such falsity by their borrowers for the very purpose of insulating their own claims from discharge.” 516 U. S., at 76–77. This concern may also have informed Congress’s decision to limit (B)’s prohibition on discharge to fraudulent conduct by the debtor herself. Whatever the rationale, it does not “def[y] credulity” to think that Congress established differing rules for (A) and (B). Brief for Petitioner 23.
B
Our precedent, along with Congress’s response to it, eliminates any possible doubt about our textual analysis. In the late 19th century, the discharge exception for fraud read as follows: “[N]o debt created by the fraud or embezzlement of the bankrupt … shall be discharged under this act.” Act of Mar. 2, 1867, §33, 14 Stat. 533 (emphasis added). This language seemed to limit the exception to fraud committed by
