The White House revealed its budget proposal for fiscal year 2021 on Monday, planning considerable slash in the 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 FY 2021 budget requests nearly 41 billion U.S. dollars 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. 
  
White House budget reflects the Trump administration's priorities in spending negotiations for the FY 2021, which runs from October 1, 2020 to September 30, 2021. 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 half a trillion U.S. dollars from Medicare, takes 900 billion dollars 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.

Pentagon budget bolsters nuclear weapons, weapons research

Trump's 740.5 billion U.S. dollars 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 29 billion U.S. dollars extra dollars, a second senior defense official said. Fully modernizing the U.S. nuclear triad will cost more than a trillion dollars over 30 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. 

The funding will go to better nuclear command and control as  well as delivery platforms like the Columbia Class nuclear  submarine made by Huntington Ingalls Industries and  General Dynamics and the certification to carry nuclear  bombs aboard the stealthy F-35 jet fighter made by Lockheed  Martin Co. 

The Pentagon's budget request includes 69 billion U.S. dollars to fund ongoing wars and other Pentagon needs.  

Trump's 2021 budget also proposed 150 million U.S. dollars for the creation of a U.S. uranium reserve as the administration seeks to help struggling producers of the fuel for nuclear power reactors. 

The money, if approved by Congress, would begin the process of purchasing uranium, Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette told reporters in a teleconference on the Energy Department's budget. 

(With input from Xinhua, Reuters)