It should be noted that the US decided not to extend the universal free school meals program, because it was "too expensive" at $11B. They also stopped the expanded and early payment of family tax credits, causing a double-whammy hit to poor families (then pile on inflation/food prices, and gas prices). But $50B to large monopolistic companies isn't "too expensive," and we can afford that . Unfortunately 52 senators…
A substantial number of those 52 senators oppose free school meals not because they're "too expensive" but because the policy itself (the government giving free food to children) is something they object to on ideological grounds. A much smaller subset of that group also oppose the government giving free stuff to industry, but in either case the cost is not what they're concerned about.
Rather then ideology most legislators rule by the most persuasive lobbying, this includes people and PACs that pay for their very very expensive campaign funds. And in this case semiconductor monopolies simply has a better performing lobbying campaign then social advocacy groups, so the former gets passed but not the latter.
Note. I don’t believe this listing of democracy is unique to the USA. You see it in Europe as well. However USA is especially prone to this because of lax lobbying laws, lax campaign financing laws while also being one of the least represented democracy in the world (even less represented then non-democracies like China).