[olkingcole]

My thoughts as a regular American: Among other factors, floating around in a murky spot in US culture are disdainful notions that money for public services will go to "them" or the undeserving or the degenerate or that it will enable lazy people or devalue hard workers. This intersects with a lot of other longstanding American culture problems, including bigotry over race/ethnicity/religion, distrust of government, culture divides like rural/urban, American (mis)conceptions of meritocracy, etc. These beliefs are often espoused even by people who would benefit greatly (and deservingly) from those programs, but instead they see them as the source of their problems. I can't speak to the details of the hows and whys but those are the connections I see (at least from one angle).

EDIT: I want to add that the above is constantly aggravated by opportunistic politicians and toxic media (both traditional and social media)