"They are only given the funding crumbs and never resourced to actually win," Murphy said at a Council on Foreign Relations event on Monday. "The battlefield is different than it was decades ago."

Murphy is pitching a plan to inject nearly $130 billion into foreign affairs spread out over five years. His recommended reforms would cost approximately $11 billion in fiscal 2018 and scale up to more than $43 billion for fiscal 2022.

The move would increase the overall State Department and foreign operations budget from an estimated $52 billion in fiscal 2017 to more than $100 billion in fiscal 2022.

That would include setting up a new U.S. international development bank, boosting hiring at the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and bolstering funding for the counterterrorism Global Engagement Center.

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Murphy's proposal comes as the Trump administration asks for deep cuts to the State Department, with many top positions either vacant or filled by an acting official.

The Connecticut Democrat — who is a member of the Foreign Relations Committee — acknowledged the gap between his proposal and the administration.

"I understand that today this is not a realistic proposal, but it's a marker. It's a marker for where we should be," he said.

Lawmakers currently face an April 28 deadline to pass a government funding bill and avoid a government shutdown. They'll also need to pass a fiscal 2018 funding bill by Oct. 1.

Democrats are reluctant to increase defense funding without an equal increase in nondefense funding. Murphy noted on Monday that there are currently more employees in military grocery stores than diplomats working for the State Department.

"We should look at the State Department and USAID the same way we look at the Department of Defense," he added.

Murphy added that lawmakers had a private lunch with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and said that while he has "not lost hope," he doesn't expect Tillerson to actively advocate for funding increases within his department.

"[But] we have lots of Republicans who know how devastating a 30 percent cut would be," he said. "[There's] a pretty good chance that we can get Republican and Democratic support for plus ups."