Bipartisan legislation introduced in the House of Representatives Friday would end what business groups describe as a budget “gimmick” that has led to large, unnecessary increases in premiums that employers pay the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.

The legislation, sponsored by Reps. Jim Renacci, R-Ohio, and Mark Pocan, D-Wis., would repeal a provision in a 1980 law that allows PBGC premiums to be calculated as general federal revenue, even though the premiums are used exclusively to help the PBGC pay guaranteed but unfunded benefits in pension plans that the agency takes over when employers get in financial trouble or fail and go out of business.

“Discipline is needed to ensure that PBGC premiums are used solely to protect the pension system and not as a budget gimmick to pay for unrelated federal programs,” Annette Guarisco Fildes, president and CEO of the Washington-based ERISA Industry Committee, said in a statement.

Congress has used that budget approach several times in recent years, including approving legislation last year to hike premiums even though the PBGC did not request the increases.

Under the 2015 law, for example, the PBGC flat-rate premium paid by all defined benefit plan sponsors is to rise to $69 per plan participant in 2017, $74 in 2018 and $80 in 2019. That compares with a $64 per participant premium this year, a rate that was set under a 2013 law.

In addition, the 2015 law increased the so-called variable-rate premium to $33 per $1,000 of plan underfunding in 2017, $37 in 2018 and $41 in 2019. That compares with $30 this year.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the 2015 law would result in employers paying an additional $4 billion in PBGC premiums through 2025.

By no longer allowing PBGC premiums to be counted as general revenue under the Pension and Budget Integrity Act of 2016, legislators’ incentive to keep hiking premiums would be eliminated, according to a letter seven business groups sent Friday to Reps. Renacci and Pocan. The groups include the ERISA Industry Committee, the American Benefits Council and the Committee on Investment of Employee Benefit Assets.

Those continued premium hikes also have been a factor in employers’ move to downsize their plans, such as offering former participants the option to convert their future annuity benefit to a cash lump sum or dramatically shrink their plans by shifting the liabilities to insurers through the purchase of group annuities, employee benefit consultants and others have said frequently.

Increasing PBGC premiums have “jeopardized” employer’s ability to continue their pension plans, the business groups said in their letter to the congressmen.