Same story with shuttle and that's why it looks the way it is and was as expensive as it was. It would have been a completely different vehicle if Congress weren't meddling.
The whole point of the space shuttle was to have it service the space station, but the station wasn't greenlit. Instead we got a much bigger shuttle that was useful as a military asset but was a money pit with terrible safety record. Luckily the Soviet Union collapsed and the ISS was funded as a job program for Soviet rocket scientists (out of fear they could be poached to work on ICBMs for other nations).
It's the first time that I heard this theory. Do you have any sources to read up on it?
NASA is wasteful, eh? Maybe that's because they have no incentive not to be wasteful..
I can't say NASA seems particularly wasteful outside ways in which they are mandated to be so.
This won't change no matter who you vote in. It's like hardwired into the system.
The incentive massively is instead in favor of that congressperson to have a space program that is meets some minimum bar of competence, and past that point do everything to benefit that congressperson's voting district such as mandate certain things be manufactured there, etc.
NASA's doing what they're told, and Congress is doing what we asked them to.