Scalia's textualism is more nuanced. When we say something like "what the lawmakers aimed to achieve", there is an implicit assumption that all lawmakers agree

Scalia's textualism is more nuanced. When we say something like "what the lawmakers aimed to achieve", there is an implicit assumption that all lawmakers agreed with the intent of the legislation. But what they vote on is the text of the legislation, not the intent. So while there might be a committee of 14 congressmen that intend a law to act a certain way, there is a larger group that then proceeds to debate and enact the law, that may not share that intent, but may share the intent as codified in the law, which may be narrower or broader than the intent of the people who wrote the legislation itself.