The Obama administration is renewing its call for revamping the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.'s premium structure so that the premiums employers pay better reflect the risks their pension plans pose to the agency.

In its proposed federal budget for fiscal 2014 released Wednesday, the administration proposed giving the PBGC's board of directors authority, starting in 2015, to set premiums that take into account the risks that pension plans present to participants and to the PBGC.

The proposal calls for the PBGC to undertake a one-year study of the proposal, as well as a gradual phase-in. The proposal would require congressional approval.

While the budget proposal did not provide any details, the PBGC previously has outlined an approach in which premiums paid by employers would be based at least in part by their credit ratings.

“The current system punishes responsible companies by making them pay for the mistakes of others and punishes plans by raising rates just when companies can least afford it. That's why administrations of both parties, and recently (the Government Accountability Office), have supported giving PBGC what the (Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.) has long had — the ability to set its own rates and to set them in ways that are fair,” PBGC Director Joshua Gotbaum said Wednesday in a statement.

All employers with defined benefit plans pay a base PBGC premium of $42 per participant. An additional premium is assessed on employers with underfunded plans.

The administration's risk-related premium proposal was sharply criticized by the ERISA Industry Committee as unnecessary and likely to lead to more employers terminating their pension plans.

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“ERIC has repeatedly argued that the PBGC's purported deficit is largely due to artificially low interest rates, and allowing the PBGC to set premiums based on a company's so-called risk will only further push plan sponsors to exit the system. It should also be noted that granting the PBGC this new premium setting authority could be relatively unprecedented since insurers in the private sector normally must obtain regulatory approval for premium increases for risks they underwrite and face the responses of the competitive market,” ERIC President Scott Macey said in a statement.

Last November, the PBGC reported a record $29.1 billion deficit in its insurance program covering single-employer plans.

In fiscal 2014, the PBGC, according to the budget proposal, expects to pay more than $6 billion in benefits to 873,000 participants in failed pension plans the agency has taken over. That's a nearly eight-fold increase compared with the $763 million in benefits the agency paid in 1994 to 182,000 participants in plans the agency took over.