It is important to remember that the Space Race was a front of the Cold War, the "Why do we need a Moon program?" question was squarely answered by "Because we are at war."

Today we are not at war, at least not one that concerns space or the Moon. China is in a fierce self-imposed race to land on the Moon and Do The Other Things because it (probably correctly) views the West as an enemy to overcome. The US has not reciprocated that sentient, we've just shut them out of our space programs and then left them be.

For the US government to fund another Moon program we definitely need an answer to the question of Why. So far we don't have one other than THE PRESTIGE and OUR SCIENCE GRANTS as evidenced by many other threads on similar subject matter here. That's not going to convince the taxpayers.