This has absolutely nothing to do with communism or socialism. Somehow the US discourse has redefined those terms to encompass any and all charitable policies.

This has absolutely nothing to do with communism or socialism. Somehow the US discourse has redefined those terms to encompass any and all charitable policies. Communism and socialism are systems where the means of production are owned either collectively or by the state. At the point where US Republicans (as well other proto-fascists like Hungary) enact a policy it should be pretty obvious that it isn’t, like, textbook Stalinism. If you want to complain about it, „expensive populism“ would seem to be a more fitting and still derogatory term. Or maybe, considering every government with the financial means to do so has enacted such a program, it’s just terribly obvious pragmatism.