Can you expand on what you mean by token uses? Wasn't Saturn V used for golf on the moon?
Putting people on the moon today is a lot less substantive, and doing it with decades old technology makes it even less so.
I see the correlation you're trying to draw: "neither is of any practical use", but I think even that ignores the very deliberate effects the first space race had on the USSR.
Budget and schedule overruns are expected with any large project - it's just the nature of contracting. But there are limits, and SLS blew past them quite a while ago. I'm not sure how much of it is NASA's fault given how much congressional meddling has gone on, though.