Yes, but when it comes to SETI, their track record has been
otherwise.

They even changed the name of their program to some dismal
acronym - HRMS (High Resolution Microwave Survey) - to try
and hide the fact that they were searching for alien signals.

The "ploy" failed when an ignorant senator from Nevada did
the usual "wasting taxpayers money on Little Green Men" bit
and the whole thing was shut down after running less than
one year.

No, it wasn't Proxmire, he tried to stop funding back in the
early 1980s until Carl Sagan wised him up to what exactly
was going on. But then it took another decade for NASA to
get in gear, only to have the fiasco described above. And
then there was a mandate from NASA Administrator Goldin
that there be no mention of SETI or Bioastronomy while he
was around.

Funny, though, that the few times he talked to the public
and asked them what they wanted from NASA, it was almost
always searching for ETI and putting humans on Mars and
not the ISS.

Thankfully a private group, The SETI Institute, picked it up
and it became Project Phoenix. And since the early 1990s,
other private groups have done their own SETI. Some have
been more successful than others, but none were at the
mercy of the government or "drained" taxpayers' wallets.

http://www.setileague.org/general/history.htm