> there are competing demands placed on this finite source

The US national debt has gone up by 2 trillion under the current administration. They are spending money they don't have at a faster rate than any time in history.

Whatever else you can say about the cuts to science, you can't say they're due to "competing demands." They're not cutting in order to fund better research, they're cutting (in the most counterproductive way) to send a message to scientists that politically inconvenient research is not welcome.