Cite as: 513 U. S. 414 (1995)
Opinion of the Court
main and (if others withdrew) risk having to bear alone the entire cost of keeping the shaky plan afloat. Consequently, a plan's financial troubles could trigger a stampede for the exit doors, thereby ensuring the plan's demise. See Connolly v. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, 475 U. S. 211, 216 (1986); Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation v. R. A. Gray & Co., 467 U. S. 717, 722-723, n. 2 (1984); see also 29 U. S. C. § 1001a(a)(4); H. R. Rep. No. 96-869, pt. 1, pp. 54-55 (1980); D. McGill & D. Grubbs, Fundamentals of Private Pensions 618-619 (6th ed. 1989). MPPAA helped eliminate this problem by changing the strategic considerations. It transformed what was only a risk (that a withdrawing employer would have to pay a fair share of under-funding) into a certainty. That is to say, it imposed a withdrawal charge on all employers withdrawing from an underfunded plan (whether or not the plan later became insolvent). And, it set forth a detailed set of rules for determining, and collecting, that charge.
B MPPAA's Basic Approach
The way in which MPPAA calculates interest is related to the way in which that statute answers three more general, and more important, questions: First, how much is the withdrawal charge? MPPAA's lengthy charge-determination section, § 1391, sets forth rules for calculating a withdrawing employer's fair share of a plan's underfunding. See 29 U. S. C. § 1391. It explains (a) how to determine a plan's total underfunding; and (b) how to determine an employer's fair share (based primarily upon the comparative number of that employer's covered workers in each earlier year and the related level of that employer's contributions).
One might expect § 1391 to calculate a withdrawal charge that equals the withdrawing employer's fair share of a plan's underfunding as of the day the employer withdraws. But, instead, § 1391 instructs a plan to make the withdrawal
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