Governments have found one neat trick to hide what are exactly handouts from scrutiny like that. They call them "tax credits". A "tax credit" is literally just

Governments have found one neat trick to hide what are exactly handouts from scrutiny like that. They call them "tax credits". A "tax credit" is literally just a handout, a $1000 tax credit means you get a $1000 check. You don't even have to pay any taxes to get a tax credit. It's a pure handout. But the phase "tax credit" implies that it is somehow connected to taxes that you've paid some time in the past, so in people's minds it's not a handout anymore. Even hardcore conservatives can get behind "tax credits"! All you go to do is call the handout a tax credit and give it to almost everyone, and you implemented UBI. In the USA, you wouldn't even need a new system to implement. We have various proto-UBIs written in our tax code, the most notable being the Earned Income Credit, we would just need to "enhance" it.