I agree, but it's meaningless until Richard "Pork Barrel" Shelby is out of office. The ideal space program for that parasite is, replace the STS with the SLS (same engines, different burn time) and the ISS with the Deep Space Gateway (gateway to nowhere).
We should and could establish a huge lunar settlement inside a lava tube on the lunar surface; thanks to the low gravity, those have a potential of bridging a half mile wide and many miles long underground habitat where huge numbers of people could live, do research and (more to the point) vacation.
I ccouldn't agree more. Until our technology is quite a bit more advanced than it is today, trying to send humans to Mars is a very dangerous prospect, and would be prohibitively expensive.
It makes much more sense to continue human exploration of our own moon, using current technology and know-how. It's the rational first step into the wider cosmos, and a necessary proving ground for everything we'll need to successfully colonize Mars.
Besides, there's Helium-3 in them thar hills.