The reality is that every single industry that has to beg congress for funding has to do this, or they claim to have to do this, because if you don't play pork

The reality is that every single industry that has to beg congress for funding has to do this, or they claim to have to do this, because if you don't play pork barrel politics with the budget for your program, it will be first in line to be axed by the next admin for a dumb political ad about how that administration "reduces waste". How many programs has NASA been told "yes, do this", and then a few years down the road have their funding cut out from under them? They have to completely rebuild their projects, plans, and goals for the future pretty much every other year, as whether they are even considered a thing worth funding is partisan. One party explicitly considers them part of a global conspiracy against our economy! Consider during COVID, and now the Ukraine war. The US struggles to ramp up capacity because every American exec is too risk averse to invest in new factories that aren't absolutely garanteed by law to pay off in the current decade. Political games have made it impossible to fund anything for longer than 4 years.