Cite as: 537 U. S. 149 (2003)
Syllabus
(2) The result of appealing to plausibility is not affected by either of the other textual features that the companies argue indicate inability to assign beneficiaries after October 1, 1993. Pp. 163-171.
(i) The provision for unassigned beneficiary status, § 9704(d), cannot be characterized as the specification of a "consequence" for failure to assign a beneficiary to an operator or related person. It speaks not in terms of the Commissioner's failure to assign beneficiaries but simply of "beneficiaries who are not assigned." The most obvious reason for such unassigned status is a former employer's disappearance. This is not to say that a failure of timely assignment does not also leave a beneficiary "unassigned." It simply means that unassigned status has no significance peculiar to failure of timely assignment. In addition, to the extent that unassigned status is a consequence of mere untimeliness, the most obvious reason for specifying that consequence is not a supposed desire for finality but a default rule telling the Social Security Administration what funding source to use in the absence of any other. It is unrealistic to think that Congress understood unassigned status as an enduring consequence of uncompleted work, for nothing indicates that it foresaw that some beneficiaries matchable with operators still in business might not be assigned by the deadline. In the one instance where Congress clearly weighed finality on October 1, 1993, against accuracy of initial assignments, accuracy won, see §§ 9704(d), (f); and the companies' attempts to limit this apparent preference for accuracy fail. Pp. 163-169.
(ii) The provision that an operator's contribution for the benefit of the unassigned shall be calculated based on "assignments as of October 1, 1993," § 9704(f)(1), does not mean that an assigned operator's percentage of potential liability for the benefit of the unassigned is fixed according to the assignments made at that date. "[A]s of" need not mean, as the companies contend, "as assignments actually stand" on that date, but can mean assignments as they shall be on that date, assuming the Commissioner complies with Congress's command. Since there is no "plain" reading, there is nothing left of this "as of" argument except its stress that the applicable percentage can be modified only in accordance with exceptions for initial error or an assignee operator's demise. And the enunciation of two exceptions does not imply the exclusion of a third when there is no reason to think that Congress considered such an exclusion and there is good reason to conclude that Congress did not foresee a failure to make timely assignments. Pp. 170-171.
(b) The Coal Act was designed to allocate the greatest number of beneficiaries to a prior responsible operator. The way to reach this objective is to read the statutory date as a spur to prompt action, not as a bar to tardy completion of the business of ensuring that benefits
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