To hear House Speaker Kevin McCarthy talk, Republicans are doing poor people a favor by seeking to impose or expand work requirements for recipients of social welfare programs. He and others argue that recipients who are pushed out of their comfort zones will get jobs and put themselves on the road to the middle class. “Assistance programs are supposed to be temporary, not permanent,” he said in a speech at the New York Stock Exchange in April. “A hand up, not a handout. A bridge to independence, not a barrier.”