416
Opinion of the Court
sum or to "amortize" it, making payments over time. This case focuses upon a withdrawing employer who amortizes the charge, and it asks when, for purposes of calculating the amortization schedule, interest begins to accrue on the amortized charge. The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that, for purposes of computation, interest begins to accrue on the first day of the year after withdrawal. We agree and affirm its judgment.
I
We shall briefly describe the general purpose of MPPAA, the basic way MPPAA works, and the relevant interest-related facts of the case before us.
A MPPAA's General Purpose
MPPAA helps solve a problem that became apparent after Congress enacted the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), 88 Stat. 829, 29 U. S. C. § 1001 et seq. ERISA helped assure private-sector workers that they would receive the pensions that their employers had promised them. See, e. g., Concrete Pipe & Products of Cal., Inc. v. Construction Laborers Pension Trust for Southern Cal., 508 U. S. 602, 605-609 (1993). To do so, among other things, ERISA required employers to make contributions that would produce pension plan assets sufficient to meet future vested pension liabilities; it mandated termination insurance to protect workers against a plan's bankruptcy; and, if a plan became insolvent, it held any employer who had withdrawn from the plan during the previous five years liable for a fair share of the plan's underfunding. See 26 U. S. C. § 412 (minimum funding standards); 29 U. S. C. § 1082 (same); 29 U. S. C. § 1301 et seq. (termination insurance); 29 U. S. C. § 1364 (withdrawal liability).
Unfortunately, this scheme encouraged an employer to withdraw from a financially shaky plan and risk paying its share if the plan later became insolvent, rather than to re-
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