(disclaimer, this is Europe centric and may not apply to US. Your mileage may vary)
Lets talk about politicians. For politicians the best outcome possible in the game, is to keep as much as possible of that money for themselves, unless is useful to promote their own careers somehow.
They will use every single trick in the book to say "we invested lotta money in science" so they are justified to took it from the vault, but then use the money on other things. Allocating the same money to three different ministries is a good way to round the budget books.
How they do it?,
1) Putting arbitrary obstacles so scientists will never reach the money.
Some common tricks include:
* 1.1 Arbitrary narrow intervals of time where people can apply to the job. In the past I received a lot of job offers after the application interval was closed for example.
* 1.2 Feast and famine. Releasing no new offers in months, or years, followed by a flood of offers at the same time in arbitrary periods where applying to more than one job is specifically forbidden.
* 1.3 Peekaboo. Lack of a common billboard where all the jobs are advertised.
* 1.4 Job offer shaped like a puzzle piece. That is the worse offence and would require a more extensive explanation. This includes lots of constrains. Like the typical constrains by age for example (The same constrains that are specifically forbidden in the constitution). Is impossible to hire a specialist with a complicated pool of unrelated requisites that must be fulfilled previously, unless they are finely knit around an previously known candidate, and they know it.
* 1.5 Bureaucracy overload to apply.
etc...
2) Spreading and repeating as much as possible the idea that science "is vocational and funny"
So scientists should accept the idea that they are privileged to be "volunteering" or "making a better world" or doing "citizen science". Other names for: 'You work for free while I eat the lobster with the money that I would need to "spent" in paying you otherwise'.