Use Brownie to send ERC20 tokens to a payable function with the amount of tokens as an argument to the function

Question

I have the following AlgoToken contract:

interface StableCoin {
    function balanceOf(address account) external view returns (uint256);
    function allowance(address owner, address spender) external view returns (uint256);
    function transfer(address recipient, uint256 amount) external returns (bool);
    function approve(address spender, uint256 amount) external returns (bool);
    function transferFrom(address sender, address recipient, uint256 amount) external returns (bool);
}

contract AlgoToken is ERC20{

    using ABDKMathQuad for uint256;
    using ABDKMathQuad for int256;
    using ABDKMathQuad for bytes16;

    StableCoin public stable_coin;

    function buy(uint $USD_amount) public payable {
        
        //do a bunch of stuff to calculate algos_to_mint

        stable_coin.transferFrom(msg.sender, address(this), $USD_amount);
        _mint(msg.sender, algos_to_mint);
    }

    function sell(uint $algo_amount) public payable{
    
       // do a bunch of stuff to calculate $USD_to_send

       _burn(msg.sender, $algo_amount);
       stable_coin.transferFrom(address(this), msg.sender, $USD_to_send);
    }
}

In python I have the following brownie deployments:

USDS_Token = ERC20_public_mint.deploy("Stable Coin", "USDS", {'from': accounts[0]})
        
algoToken = AlgoToken.deploy(
    big_balance(500.54321),\
    300,\
    "Price growth Algo Token",\
    "Algo", \
    USDS_Token.address,
    {"from": accounts[1]}\

ERC20_public_mint is an ERC20 with a public mint function:

    function mint(address account, uint256 amount) public {
        _mint(account, amount);
    }

I also have a python buy function:

def buy(USD_amount):
    USDS_Token.mint(USDS_Token.address, USD_amount)
    USDS_Token.approve(algoToken.address, USD_amount)
    USDS_Token.increaseAllowance(algoToken.address, USD_amount)
    contract_function = algoToken.buy(USD_amount)
    tx_hash = contract_function.transact({"from": accounts[0], "account": USDC_Token.address, "amount": math.floor(USD_amount)})
    return tx_hash

No matter what I do I get an error on algoToken.buy(USD_amount). The current code yields the following error:

Transaction sent: 0x51706233d36caf15a92ba04c599a38c3203b4feed005abbc01c6d6adc6d81b7d
  Gas price: 0.0 gwei   Gas limit: 12000000   Nonce: 1
  AlgoToken.buy confirmed (ERC20: insufficient allowance)   Block: 6   Gas used: 280614 (2.34%)

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "tests/test-price-growth-algo-token.py", line 197, in <module>
    buy(big_balance(1000.345672))
  File "tests/test-price-growth-algo-token.py", line 138, in buy
    contract_function = algoToken.buy(USD_amount)
  File "/home/steve/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/brownie/network/contract.py", line 1864, in __call__
    return self.transact(*args)
  File "/home/steve/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/brownie/network/contract.py", line 1737, in transact
    return tx["from"].transfer(
  File "/home/steve/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/brownie/network/account.py", line 682, in transfer
    receipt._raise_if_reverted(exc)
  File "/home/steve/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/brownie/network/transaction.py", line 446, in _raise_if_reverted
    raise exc._with_attr(
brownie.exceptions.VirtualMachineError: revert: ERC20: insufficient allowance
Trace step -1, program counter 4635:
  File "contracts/price-growth-algo-token.sol", line 274, in AlgoToken.buy:
        idealized_Mcap = K_target.mul(f_slip).add(f_peg);
        target_Mcap = price.mul(f_hyp_supply);

        stable_coin.transferFrom(msg.sender, address(this), $USD_amount);
        _mint(msg.sender, algos_to_mint);

    }

I experimented with a zillion ways to structure the buy functions but everything I've tried has resulted in errors. How can I use brownie to send ERC20 tokens to the algoToken contract by calling the algoToken.buy function?