Philosophically, that assertion can be made.

Real-world, there are vastly more humans who are against these cuts for mundane reasons than there are devout philosophers.

And our current scientific research establishment is a bloated & self-serving bureaucracy. Which demands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_of_clergy while treating its actual production workers like crap.

And, given human nature, reforming a crappy "X-ology Research Establishment" is far more difficult that deciding on the in-theory relative merits of researching X-ology vs. Y-ology vs. Z-ology.

I agree, in principle. However, this is a trap.

Here’s a playbook:

1. Declare, loudly, that a problem exists. The problem doesn’t have to be real, but it’s better if it is.

2. Announce, even more loudly, that you are going to address the problem in a way that’s suspiciously self serving.

3. Implement your preferred solution as rapidly as possible. The “solution” can be as flawed as you like. It may or may not actually fix the original problem; that part is unimportant.

4. When people react to your implementation, they sort themselves into three buckets: supporters (partisan or otherwise), detractors (partisan or otherwise), and “reasonable people” who “see both sides.”

5. While the “reasonable people” are still debating whether it was a good idea to cure the patient’s brain tumor by decapitation, move on to the next “problem” that needs to be “fixed.”

By all means we should discuss the transparency of this process, what those national priorities are, and exactly what we (collectively as taxpayers) the risk-reward tradeoff should be. But let’s not pretend that the funding agencies don’t already view science as a public investment, or be too hasty about dismissing the potential medium term economic value of research into for example geology and geochemistry on mars

The disingenuity is even more glaring when you look at the destructionists' overall budget plan, which has nothing to do with actual fiscal responsibility but instead includes further tax cuts and increased deficit spending. The boosters of the narrative haven't had anything to do with actual fiscal responsibility for decades, but at least the previous goal was merely justifying corporate welfare to domestic banksters as opposed to the plainly anti-American goals of whatever new foreign ownership the Republican party is under these days.

And, why are we looking to increase the deficit? Are we really going to sit here and pretend this administration has desire, at all, to address the deficit? How much can we lie before it becomes so blatant it's poison to the human mind?