Agreed. I poked around for more primary sources but the office of a senator seemed less controversial than partisan news organizations. Actual links to studies would be less useful since the "interesting bit" would be a note about funding coming from the NSF or something.

It's an incomplete and distorted picture of how bureaucracy funds research. I brought it up to add counterpoints and context to the implication that government is actually good at this sort of thing if we'd just get over free market capitalism (or something).