Cite as: 522 U. S. 192 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
misses a scheduled withdrawal liability payment. The statute of limitations does not begin to run until that time.
A
By its terms, the MPPAA's six-year statute of limitations runs from "the date on which the cause of action arose." 29 U. S. C. § 1451(f)(1). This language, as we comprehend it, incorporates the standard rule that the limitations period commences when the plaintiff has "a complete and present cause of action." Rawlings v. Ray, 312 U. S., at 98; see also Clark v. Iowa City, 20 Wall. 583, 589 (1875) ("All statutes of limitation begin to run when the right of action is complete . . . ."). Unless Congress has told us otherwise in the legislation at issue, a cause of action does not become "complete and present" for limitations purposes until the plaintiff can file suit and obtain relief. See Reiter v. Cooper, 507 U. S. 258, 267 (1993) ("While it is theoretically possible for a statute to create a cause of action that accrues at one time for the purpose of calculating when the statute of limitations begins to run, but at another time for the purpose of bringing suit, we will not infer such an odd result in the absence of any such indication in the statute."). The MPPAA contains no indication that Congress intended to depart from the general rule.
The date of withdrawal cannot start the statute of limitations clock, because the MPPAA affords a plan no basis to obtain relief against an employer on that date. The plan could not sue to undo the withdrawal, for an employer does not violate the MPPAA simply by exiting the plan. The Act takes as a given that employers may withdraw. Instead of prohibiting employers from leaving their plans, Congress imposed a scheme of mandatory payments designed to discourage withdrawals ex ante and cushion their impact ex post. See Milwaukee Brewery Workers' Pension Plan, 513 U. S., at 416-417; Connolly, 475 U. S., at 216-217. Under that scheme, withdrawal "merely sets in motion the usual (and
201
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