Republican members of Congress on Tuesday warned the Obama administration that its recent "risk corridors" program - a backup plan where taxpayer dollars go into the Affordable Care Act to cover insurers that lost money - violates federal law.

A provision was included in the passing of ObamaCare, which allowed the government bail out the insurance companies with money from a pool of funds collected from insurers that turned a profit, Fox News reported.

In May, the administration issued the change to the backup plan because many of the insurance companies participating in ObamaCare were likely to announce double-digit rate hikes as a result of insuring an unexpected amount of high-risk customers.

Had the insurers reported the premium hikes, several Democrats would lose ground in their reelection campaign this year. The backup plan would essentially offset the insurance companies' losses saving customers from paying higher rates.

However, several GOP lawmakers including Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) insist that the government would be allowed to transfer "potentially billions" of taxpayer dollars from other federal programs -- a decision only Congress can approve, according to Fox.

"It is plain that under current law, the Obama administration does not have the ability to divert money from programs that Congress has funded," Sessions, the tope Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, told Fox in a statement. "Congress alone was given the power of the purse -- the power to appropriate funds. Yet again, the administration is circumventing Congress and seeking to write its own laws."

Sessions along with Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) sent a letter Tuesday to newly confirmed Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Matthews Burwell expressing their concerns that the new rule "would constitute an unlawful transfer of potentially billions of taxpayer dollars to insurers."

The same day, HHS spokeswoman Erin Shields told Fox that no deficit has been projected for the three-year-long risk corridor program by the Congressional Budget Office. She added that the agency was "confident" there wouldn't be one.

Under the program, the payments are "set by the lawn and regulation," she said, adding, "like any authorized program, HHS may use available appropriations to make payment consistent with these rules."