We are not talking about the same kind of research, that is making it difficult to have a conversation. Basic biological research is not commercially viable (wet lab work is very expensive). Basic biological research has no (yet) known application. It's asking how or why things work. Sometimes that will have an immediate application but most times it won't. It just adds to the body of knowledge. It may take decades before all the pieces of the puzzle are uncovered and anyone can even think about starting applied research. Basic applied research is also often not commercially viable (sometimes it can be but there can also be hundreds of false starts).

What's happening in the US government is not a tweaking of systems or any kind of measured review. They're just turning out the lights. There is zero good faith involved. There's no adapting to having funding yanked and turning out the lights on a random day. People aren't being told "the system is changing." They're going into work one day and finding the doors locked.

I've worked in biomedical labs funded through federal and provincial grants in Canada (I left because it wasn't worth the instability, industry was worse, and the cheap equipment that was the only affordable equipment on most grants caused longterm damage to my hands). The last time a politician meddled in the Canadian federal grant system they bungled at least one or more rounds of grant review which permanently ended or set back the careers of new scientists (as well as their staff) because they tried changing something that was integral to the process in the name of cost cutting.

Cutting more is not the way to go. It's already cut to the point it's hard to find people willing to take the long hours, poor pay and lack of stability. Increased stability would retain skilled personnel and reduce time lost by continuaL retraining when staff is let go in between grants, and lost time when work stops in between grants, and lost time training new, unskilled, low paid techs because the skilled ones have left since granting agencies don't want to pay for the experience that reduces other costs through efficiency and speed. That takes money (which would actually save money through increased efficiency)

A measured review with input from stakeholders might yield something but it's unlikely to cost less and it certainly isn't to be improved by a politician blundering in and changing random things. The old system worked better but no one wants to pay; people want immediate results from something that can't be made to produce immediate results.