It might not seem like it, but I really am on your team. What you're missing and Sabine understands is that there is no such thing as spending that's insignificant, and whether we're talking cash or mission bandwidth, everything has opportunity costs. Exactly how many possible missions are thrown out every time we decide to send squishy humans instead of robots?

As for defense spending, to be clear I'm all for swapping the pentagon/nasa budgets, but afterwards I'd still call bullshit if I think there's gross mismanagement at NASA. Pandering to the public with space-selfies is mismanagement, even if it's brought on by desperation and shrinking budgets. I think there's a strong argument Webb was also is bad strategy / mismanagement, but it's too long to get into here.

Unfortunately, like everyone else, NASA, NSF et al do need to worry about public trust, ROI, and the dreaded question: What have you done for me lately? There's this idea that basic research must be incompatible with that sort of thing, but I disagree.