It's absolutely the latter. Congress has never really cared about spaceflight - to your Congressman it's just an opportunity to bring federal dollars to his district, because that will get him reelected.

But why not make real plans and actually get something accomplished, then you can point to something truly concrete during re-election, and even bump the funding even more.

The money you get from contractors for reelection is going to help more than anything you can actually point to. House seats are up every two years, and you don't accomplish much in aerospace in two years.

And if you want to push money to your districts make sure it's useful.