NASA funding has been slashed since the 1960's when they practically had a blank check to do whatever they wanted. The fact that they can still pull off these amazing scientific feats with very limited resources just proves that American ingenuity can do damn near anything regardless of how little they have to work with. And yes, 2.5 billion to put a one ton rover on Mars seems reasonable when you considered the average cost of each shuttle flight was 1.5 billion and there were a lot of them.
Making sure our economy is in a healthy state so people don't go hungry is the job of government. They've had unlimited funds for the last 100+ years, and not only have they squandered it all, they're now borrowing money to squander in amounts too high to ever pay back. If the government had much less to spend and was held accountable for every dime, our country would run much more smoothly. Our government is like some spoiled brat billionaire that has spent all of his company's money, and is now embezzling from the company investors to maintain his lifestyle. We need term limits on members of both houses, much more accurate accounting and no lifetime pensions/medical for retired house members. Then you would see people who were interested in true public service running for office instead of people only interested in gaining wealth and power.