UNITED STATES
v.
TEMPLE
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A naval officer claimed mileage reimbursement at eight cents per mile for travel performed on public business under an 1876 statute, but Treasury accounting officers distinguished between sea and land travel, allowing actual expenses for sea travel instead of the statutory mileage rate. The Supreme Court held that the plain language of the statute entitled the officer to eight cents per mile for all travel without exception, and that accounting officers could not impose distinctions not found in the statutory text, regardless of any prior departmental practice.
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Mr. Justice Woods,
after stating the facts, delivered the opinion of the court.
The statute and the finding of the Court of Claims leave little room for controversy. The law as it stood when the travel was performed was explicit, and .is not open to construetion. We find in it no warrant for the .distinction made by the accounting officers of the treasury between travel by sea and travel on land within the United States, performed by ah officer of the navy while engaged on public business. To hold that for one class of travel he should have eight cents per mile, and for the other his actual expenses, is to make the law and not to construe it. When this travel was performed there was nót a line on the statute-book of the United States which made any provision whatever, under any circumstances, for allowing-officers of the navy,. when engaged on the public business,, their actual expenses of travel-The only law ever enacted which made such provision had been expressly repealed by the act on which the appellee based his claim for mileage. This act declared him entitled, without condition or limitation, to miléage'át the rate of eight cents per, mile, and is the only law upon the subject.
.. Our duty is to read the statute according to the natural and obvious import of the language, without resorting to subtle and forced construction for the purpose of either limiting 'or extending its operation. Waller v. Harris, 20 Wend. (N. Y.) 561; Pott v. Arthur, 104 U. S. 735. When the 'language is plain,'we have no right to insert words and phrases,'so. as to incorporate ,in the .statute a new and distinct provision.
The attempt to justify the decision of the accounting officers of the treasury is based on an alleged practice in conformity therewith, which, it is said, grew, up in the Navy Department under the act of 1835. The practice, if such there was, finds no higher warrant or sanction in the act of 1835 than in the aet of 1876. ' But even if it could have any influence in settling the meaning of an act passed forty-one years afterwards, under changed circumstances and conditions, we find no reference 'to it in either the findings or the opinion of the Court of Claims, and we cannot assume that it ever existed.
The law on which the appellee bases his case is plain afid unambiguous'. We must give it its natural and obvious meaning, and thus interpreted it leaves the appellant n,o ground to stand on.
Judgment affirmed.
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- Pott v. Arthur, 104 U.S. 735 (U.S. 1881)