https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R43419
https://ourplnt.com/budget-of-nasa-year-by-year/
Don't get me wrong. I still haven't found a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than the GOP. It's more likely that Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Airbus, et. al. reminded then who's writing the checks to PACs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program
The Artemis program infrastructure is mostly stuff advanced by Obama and Biden era Congresses and Administrations.
The loop is a well precedented procedure for testing components that have not been used for a mission before. They did the same for the Apollo program.