This pessimism has its place, but in this specific case, it is not accurate. Congress did decide that NEO's are an important problem, and eventually money was

This pessimism has its place, but in this specific case, it is not accurate. Congress did decide that NEO's are an important problem, and eventually money was appropriated to address it, and a technical solution to the detection problem has been found. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEO_Surveyor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEO_Surveyor)