After a year we polled people to gauge their opinion on the EPA's funding.

Most of the people you pool don't know how much funding the EPA gets and what they could do with marginal dollars.

For some reason I really love the idea of government organizations having to persuade me that I'm going to really benefit from how they are using society's limited resources.

Nativity is likely the biggest reason. It corrupts the process when politicians with the majority can spend money from the public purse on convincing voters of their political goals.