U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday unveiled a $6.8 trillion government spending plan for 2024 calling for dozens of new policy initiatives and higher taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals. But opposition Republicans immediately said it had no chance of winning congressional approval, VOA reported.

Biden, a Democrat in his first term in the White House and eyeing a reelection bid next year, called for more funding to counter China's economic and military clout, bigger spending on health care for Americans young and old, new education ventures and more robust staffing for the country's Environmental Protection Agency.

"China is the United States' only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do it," the White House said in a summary of the budget.

The release of the budget plan comes as the U.S. faces a looming, highly partisan debate about how to raise the country's $31.4 trillion debt ceiling—the limit on the amount of money the government can borrow to pay its bills.

If Biden and Congress cannot agree on a debt-ceiling increase in the coming months, the U.S. could default on its financial obligations for the first time, a financial catastrophe that could affect world markets and boost unemployment in the country.

Biden opponents in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives have called for large funding cuts, not increases, in future yearly spending plans, such as the one Biden presented for the 12 months starting October 1, to rein in chronic budget deficits that now total more than $1 trillion annually.

Republicans say that government spending is out of control and individual programs should be sharply trimmed or eliminated.

On the contrary, Biden is calling for heightened taxes on highly paid individuals, those making more than $400,000 a year, and on corporations to fund his new or expanded programs. Republicans have yet to spell out which programs they would pare or erase but say they will do so in the next month.