I may disagree about which programs should be cut or not, but I agree with your sentiment: we could have paid NASA 10x and not advanced significantly. It would have just all flowed into various Congressional districts. We're advancing in spaceflight because we have no other choice: the money's ran out -- years ago, really.
Political systems of organization (organizations of people set up based on the desires of the electorate and controlled by politicians) exist and act for political reasons. Getting to the moon was a political goal, not a scientific one. The shuttle and ISS were political goals. Even privatizing like we've done is a political act.
We really need to build a mass driver on Earth for cargo launches. It would not be crazy expensive, and it would make a huge difference in the cost of LEO construction. Our order of priority should be 1) reduce cost to LEO to 1/100th of what it currently is, and 2) make orbital construction costs as close as possible to other oddball ground-based construction costs, like building underwater or in Antarctica. If we can focus on dropping costs, there are thousands of industries and other actors that will do some really cool stuff with the tools we provide. But that's a really tough thing to sell politically. The real reason we have SpaceX is because nobody wanted to explain to the folks how we lost a huge amount of our launch capacity when we retired the shuttle.
I agree that we need to build a mass launcher. However, I don't think we need to build it on the Earth. I think we need to build it on an airplane.
Seriously, the limiting factor in how small you can make an orbital launch packet is atmospheric drag. The more atmospheric drag, the more mass to surface area ratio you need to reduce the losses to an acceptable level. The smaller you can make the orbital packet, the smaller you can make the mass launcher. The smaller the mass launcher, the smaller the capital expense. A small mass launcher also fits on a smaller airplane.
We already have plenty of airplanes capable of flying in the stratosphere which can mount a mass launcher of a few tons weight. If the goal is getting mass up there, it doesn't matter whether it is 1000 launches of 1 kg each, or 1 launch of 1000 kg. But 1000 launches of 1 kg each could be done with much less capital expense.
The whole reason we don't have a mass launcher is because it is perceived as too expensive. Sea-level, or even mountain-level mass launchers need to launch large packets by their nature. But a high-flying airplane could launch many smaller packets with a cost which is actually doable.
Political systems of organization (organizations of people set up based on the desires of the electorate and controlled by politicians) exist and act for political reasons. Getting to the moon was a political goal, not a scientific one. The shuttle and ISS were political goals. Even privatizing like we've done is a political act.
We really need to build a mass driver on Earth for cargo launches. It would not be crazy expensive, and it would make a huge difference in the cost of LEO construction. Our order of priority should be 1) reduce cost to LEO to 1/100th of what it currently is, and 2) make orbital construction costs as close as possible to other oddball ground-based construction costs, like building underwater or in Antarctica. If we can focus on dropping costs, there are thousands of industries and other actors that will do some really cool stuff with the tools we provide. But that's a really tough thing to sell politically. The real reason we have SpaceX is because nobody wanted to explain to the folks how we lost a huge amount of our launch capacity when we retired the shuttle.