THE White House revealed its budget proposal for fiscal year 2021 on Monday, planning a considerable slash in the U.S. State Department and foreign aid from the previous year’s appropriations, a move that is likely to be rejected by Congress.

The State Department announced on Monday that President Donald Trump’s 2021 budget requests nearly US$41 billion for the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which the U.S. media said was an over-20-percent cut from the previous year’s enacted appropriations.

The White House budget reflects the Trump administration’s priorities in spending negotiations for the 2021 fiscal year, which runs from Oct. 1 this year to Sept. 30 next year. The proposal is unlikely to become law, however, as Democratic lawmakers have already voiced opposition to the plan.

”Proposing such reckless cuts to our critical foreign policy tools isn’t a serious proposal. If this draconian budget were enacted, it would weaken our security and leadership around the world,” said Eliot Engel, Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, in a statement released on Monday.

”Congress will again reject this proposal in resounding bipartisan fashion,” the senior Democratic lawmaker added.

In the past three years, Congress has enacted significantly more funding for the State Department and foreign aid than the amount requested by the Trump administration.

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi harshly criticized the White House’s budget proposal, saying that it’s “a complete reversal” of the promises Trump made in the campaign.

”Once again, the President is showing just how little he values the good health, financial security and well-being of hard-working American families,” the Democratic leader said in a statement. “The President’s budget is anti-growth, does not create good-paying jobs and increases the national debt.”

Pelosi said the president’s plan slashes a US$0.5 trillion from Medicare, takes US$900 billion from the lifeline of Medicaid and cuts social security disability insurance.

The White House claimed that solid economic growth would support substantial deficit reduction and lead to a balanced budget by 2035.

Trump’s US$740.5 billion defense budget request includes more money for nuclear weapons and a big boost to research and development spending to prepare for future warfare.

The defense spending request contains the Pentagon’s largest research and development budget in 70 years, a senior defense official said.

Within the Pentagon’s competing priorities, the request for nuclear weapons modernization funds rose 18 percent compared to last year or US$29 billion extra, a second senior defense official said. Fully modernizing the U.S. nuclear triad will cost more than US$1 trillion over 30 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. (CGTN-SD)