208
Opinion of the Court
held from the petition for certiorari and made for the first time in briefing on the merits).
B
A withdrawing employer's basic responsibility under the MPPAA is to make each withdrawal liability payment when due. The Act thus establishes an installment obligation. Just as a pension plan cannot sue to recover any withdrawal liability until the employer misses a scheduled payment, so too must the plan generally wait until the employer misses a particular payment before suing to collect that payment. As we have explained, a statute of limitations ordinarily does not begin to run until the plaintiff could sue to enforce the obligation at issue. We therefore agree with the Third Circuit that "a new cause of action," carrying its own limitations period, "arises from the date each payment is missed." Kahle Engineering Corp., 43 F. 3d, at 857. That is the standard rule for installment obligations, and nothing in the MPPAA indicates that Congress intended to depart from it.
The general rule applies even though a plan has the option to accelerate and collect the entire debt if the employer defaults. See 29 U. S. C. § 1399(c)(5). For limitations purposes, we cannot assume that a default will or should invariably lead to acceleration, for the statutory acceleration provision is by its terms permissive. See ibid. ("In the event of a default, a plan sponsor may require immediate payment . . . .") (emphasis added). Trustees confronting a delinquent employer may accelerate if they decide such a course is in the best interests of the plan, but they need not do so to preserve the plan's right to recover future payments. Cf. Kahle Engineering Corp., 43 F. 3d, at 859, and n. 7 (de-scribing reasons why acceleration might not be in the plan's best interests). This, again, is the rule that generally applies to installment obligations. If the creditor refrains from exercising the acceleration option, the limitations pe-
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