Much of what I see is just funding papers to get paid for one's academic lifestyle. They need to hit a certain quantity or citation count, maybe be at specific

Much of what I see is just funding papers to get paid for one's academic lifestyle. They need to hit a certain quantity or citation count, maybe be at specific places, to get more grants. Plenty of research money went to colleges with huge endowments or profits. Also, to train more researchers to act the same way. A sizeable chunk was promoting Progressive politics disguised as science. People who disagreed with them were filtered so only people in dominant groups got most of the money. Research money went to people who believed those things to produce more "evidence" of those things to establish a false "consensus" on these subjects. Voters watched the damage done. When I look at it, I've seen plenty of works that were useful the NSF funded. Yet, I've seen much more which is hard to imagine the use of. Researchers have also told me they're actively discouraged from trying to turn ideas into something production-worthy because the system rewards paper quantity, not quality or production use. Add the replication crisis on top of that and it's hard to say what we're losing outside specific groups I respect. One other thing to keep in mind is this is taxpayers funded research. What that means is people's money is forcibly taken by the government, a percentage allocated for NSF, and a portion spent on waste or opposing politics. Government leaders, outside or inside NSF, made it that way. So, people who don't want their money taken by the government or want it invested differently (eg into businesses or new housing) might want NSF cut. That's a lot of Trump voters and many Democrats, too. Optimizing for the above goals, I'd definitely like to see cuts at NSF. I'd like a shift of what remains to real science with practical application. A percentage being pure or theoretical research that undergirds that. Nothing to advance political agendas of favoring specific groups. All run by people already doing real science, solid reviews, and replication. People leading groups doing science right lead policy changes to get the most out of what tax dollars remain.