I always liked the OKC spec plus line for cheap beater knives. The edges often need thinned to chop from what they come with but for batoning, work just fine. They used to be in the $40-50 range but I see some are more expensive.
If you can find a cheap parang, those work pretty well. I have a condor village parang I found on closeout for $40. If that's something of interest, PM me. I bought it for testing purpose while designing a new big knife and that is over now, and I prefer my myparang over the condor village parang, and the condor golok.
I wonder if the camillus carnivore would be acceptable. I think they're on the thick side and inexpensive, available at almost every hardware store I think, but I've always written it off as something that was unlikely to hold up (unconfirmed by me). Similar with the gerber machetes, but I think some people have used them with success.
I was trying to think of any thicker cheap machetes from tramontina, imacasa, marbles, or similar such brands and nothing comes to mind. Seems they do a lot of stuff around the 1/8" thickness.
The martindale paratrooper machete might be acceptable, but once shipping is figured into the one place I've found it, it will probably be $50.
Depending on how creative you are, maybe put a handle on a lawn mower blade and give it a whirl? I would expect the steel is heat treated for such use, you would just need to grind some things here and there to make it work, so it would depend on how much your time is worth and how much you like tinkering. May even be able to get one free if a repair shop has some they are dumping.
