Most of the public don't know there's another space race and would probably tell you that Artemis is a new brand of deodorant or something. Senators don't care about space fans, they just want NASA to be a consistent reliable jobs program that doesn't throw any curve balls (hence NASA's [nominal attempts to have a] low tolerance for risk.)

Unlike other government agencies, space fans are electorally meaningful number of people, as far as I know. Wait till China start scoring firsts with manned Moon expeditions and journalists start explaining that Senate not caring, and situation will get interesting, uncomfortably so.