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You are asking the right questions. You're even drawing the right conclusions. Keep pushing.
There have been limits on funding science just for science's sake. The oversight has been the peer review process: other scientists reviewing grant requests on merit, reviewing methodologies and findings on merit, checking the math, and building of reputations of researchers among peers. If you do good science, you get more grants. If you do shoddy science, you get called out and you get fewer grants.
Yes there was abuse, yes there was waste, yes there was nepotism, yes there was duplication. This was friction on the system, but the system fundamentally worked. It needed to be adjusted, not shattered.
Now the whole thing is being actively upended, and a veritable politburo is being established to decide what science gets funded. Politics entered the chat. Its chilling research, and we in the US are losing one of the benefits of our society, such as it is.