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This is a Jobs program, not a Space program. It's working as intended! Most politicians don't care about Space, but Jobs programs are great for re-election and basically unkillable.

Think of it this way: the Jobs spend was going to happen anyway. But instead of high-speed trains to nowhere (hello California!) we get rovers on Mars. Wasteful, but not a total waste.

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This doesn't sound right: according to Wikipedia, the cost of the Perseverance rover is $2.7e9 total over 10 years, whereas the cost of SLS is $2.5e9/year (figure for 2020). I agree that it's a jobs program, but the rovers on Mars could be too small to be relevant to the calculation. Maybe it should be "instead of high-speed trains to nowhere it's rockets to nowhere". You don't get rovers on Mars because of the spending on SLS, you get them despite the wasteful spending.

Rocket to nowhere would be great - at least it would be flying

Or even better - without SLS, perhaps you could get two rovers on Mars, a zeppelin on Venus, and a high-speed rail.

Alternative hypothesis: SLS funding supports some other program that cannot be acknowledged and actual amount spent on SLS is very small.

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