President Donald Trump will submit a $4.8 trillion budget to Congress for fiscal 2021 on Monday, which calls for $740 billion in defense spending and $590 billion domestically -- a plan that asks for additional funding for immigration enforcement and NASA.
The proposed budget is up slightly from the $4.75 trillion plan he proposed for 2020.
The president's fiscal outline is also expected to include a request for an additional $2 billion to fund a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border, a decrease from the $5 billion Trump sought in this year's budget.
The Pentagon agreed last year to divert $3.6 billion of defense funding to nearly a dozen border wall projects that Defense Secretary Mark Esper said were "necessary to support the use of armed forces in connection with the national emergency." The decision spawned a series of legal challenges that ultimately led two federal judges to block the funding.
The proposed 2021 budget also includes a request for $15.6 billion for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a 7 percent increase from current spending, and about $10 billion for Immigration and Customs enforcement, an increase of 23 percent.
Trump's proposal includes a 12 percent budget increase for NASA, to more than $25.2 billion. About $3 billion of that is earmarked for development of new human landers to advance Trump's ambition to send U.S. astronauts back to the moon by 2024 and, eventually, to Mars.
"Mars is the goal, the president has been clear, we want to plant an American flag on Mars," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said last July. "The moon is the proving ground, but Mars is the destination."
In a signal to Congress to negotiate its own policy package, Trump's budget does not include a specific set of policy changes on drug prices. Instead, it sets a goal to save $135 billion by lowering drug prices over 10 years.
The president isn't expected to ask for cuts to Social Security or Medicare, although the Trump administration has proposed more stringent reviews of the Social Security Disability Insurance program and its goal for drug price changes could affect the cost of Medicare.
The budget also includes a plan to extend the Republican tax cuts passed in 2017 by continuing cuts to the individual rate, which were set to expire in 2025, through 2035 at a cost of $1.4 trillion.
As Democrats control the House, experts say it's unlikely Trump will get everything he's asking for in his budget blueprint.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
