When NASA pulls its head out and gets the right teams together, they can do anything.
That's a foolish thing to say. They really can't do anything. It makes about as much sense as saying "When Archimedes pulls his head out and gets the right teams together, he can do anything." It's just not true. There are limitations, physical and practical, that NASA can never overcome. Could Archimedes have built a really tall ladder? Sure. Could he have built a space elevator? No. Not with all the money in the world and 500 years. He would have long since bankrupted Sicily and probably been conquered sooner than he was had he tried. At best they might have learned the limits of wood construction.
We would be far better off researching the things that we need to know for space exploration directly rather than spending the money to keep guys living in cans 100 miles overhead. We can research materials, propulsion, computers, vacuums etc. on Earth or with robotic probes. We don't need a manned space program to drive this research - if we can muster the will to put people in space we can muster the will to research these topics.
So by all means lets increase NASA's budget, but I have yet to hear a convincing argument that a manned program is worth more on a dollar-to-dollar basis with an unmanned program, or even close in terms of science output.