Sadly, you'll be hard-pressed to do direct public funding in anything that is not publicly-attractive. You'll get a gazillion bazillion dollars for research on canabinoids, and barely a dime on some boring ray-bending materials research problem that will eventually turn out to be easy to integrate on an organic substrate, opening the way for silicon-on-organic optoelectronic devices.
The "average citizen or constituent" has a level of scientific education that would prove at least as, if not more toxic than commercial interests. The current (absolutely terrible!) grant funding model is indeed too technical for the "average citizen or constituent"; a frickin' k-12 textbook is too technical for the average citizen, of course high-level research is too technical! That's why it's high-level!
> If you were motivated to go out and seek an answer for yourself, then perhaps you'd be less likely to lean on witnesses, testimony, or experts that you don't understand.
That's how we ended up with the anti-vaccines craze. People are motivated to go out and seek an answer for themselves, but they're also lazy and seek comforting answers.