WASHINGTON, April 2 (AP) - The House approved a new temporary pension contribution formula Friday that would save employers billions of dollars while lawmakers overhaul the system.

The House voted 336 to 69 to replace a formula that companies use to make pension contributions. The new calculation is considered a better estimate of how much money pension funds need to pay future retirement benefits. The companies would save an estimated $80 billion over two years.

"While everyone didn't get everything they wanted in this bill, I can assure you we'll all be back again a year from now when we are discussing long-term proposals to reform and strengthen the defined-benefit system," said Representative John Boehner, a Republican of Ohio.

Democrats criticized the bill for not doing more to save multi-employer plans - a smaller group of funds run jointly by unions and management - from being forced to make huge and crippling payments. The bill faces opposition in the Senate for that reason.

Representative Robert E. Andrews, Democrat of New Jersey, said the bill helped large corporations while punishing smaller businesses with union affiliations.

"We won't throw the life preservers for union plans and union workers," he said. "That is wrong."

Republicans countered that most multi-employer plans would not face serious pension problems until five or six years from now and did not need immediate help. A Democratic effort to make the bill more favorable to multiemployer plans was turned back on a 217-to-195 vote.

The legislation would also help financially struggling airlines and steel companies with underfunded pensions by letting them cut back on the amount they are required to pay into "catch-up" funds.

Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, doubted if there were enough votes in the Senate.

Thousands of single-employer pension providers must make quarterly payments by April 15. Without Congressional action, those providers will have to pay more, based on an outdated interest rate formula.