Cite as: 510 U. S. 86 (1993)
Thomas, J., dissenting
ately, and we will not read into the statute such a requirement. Rather, it is enough that the . . . contract 'provided' guaranteed benefits to plan participants at some finite point in the future").1
Had Congress intended the meaning the Court suggests, it easily could have applied the exception to an insurance contract "to the extent that benefits, the amount of which is guaranteed by the insurer, are vested in plan participants." The concept of vested benefits was familiar to Congress, see, e. g., 29 U. S. C. § 1001(c), and it knew how to require vesting when it intended to do so. See ERISA § 1012(a), 26 U. S. C. § 411 (1988 ed. and Supp. IV). In the guaranteed benefit policy exception, however, Congress, rather than requiring that benefits be vested, required that guaranteed benefits be provided for.2
The second requirement under the statute is that the "amount" of benefits be guaranteed. The relevant "bene-1 Even Harris Trust, which argues that benefits are not "provided for" until they have vested in plan participants, see Brief for Respondent 15, cannot avoid this common meaning of the phrase. In describing the original contract between Sperry and Hancock, Harris Trust states that "the contract provided for the annual purchase of individual deferred annuities . . . ." Id., at 2 (emphasis added). Certainly, one would not say—and Harris Trust did not mean—that the contract only "provided for" such annuities after they were purchased. Common sense and usage dictate precisely the sense in which Harris Trust used the phrase: The contract made provision for the purchase of annuities. Similarly, after 1968 the contract made provision for the payment of guaranteed benefits.
2 Giving "provides for" its ordinary meaning as outlined here would not, as the Court suggests, see ante, at 104-105, exempt from ERISA's fiduciary rules any contract "in its entirety" if it allows for the payment of some amount of guaranteed benefits in the future. As the Court implicitly acknowledges, that potential misconstruction of the exception results, not from a misreading of the term "provides for," but from a misunderstanding of the limitation imposed by the phrase "to the extent that." As I discuss below, see infra, at 117-118, I agree with the Court that by limiting the exception to policies "to the extent that" they provide for guaranteed benefits, Congress did not mean that any contract would be completely exempted "if" it provided for any guaranteed benefits. Ante, at 104-105.
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