The NIH and NSF funding doesn't appear to have that much in the way of low-level decision making by politicians looking for election day limelight. Of course t

The NIH and NSF funding doesn't appear to have that much in the way of low-level decision making by politicians looking for election day limelight. Of course there is some, such as disparaging attacks on why we should put shrimps on treadmills, to the other extreme where the government, following public demand, funded a lot of HIV/AIDS research. Also, as counter-example, the US government funds research in tropical diseases, not because it's a great photo-op for the next election, but also not completely altruistically - the military wants to be able to go into tropics and not have many of its soldiers die. So the evidence so far says that your supposition isn't the whole picture by far.