Why do Republicans want to stigmatize welfare recipients?

This morning I had a brief and revealing exchange on Twitter with Mickey Kaus, a blogger from The Daily Caller. Kaus was in the middle of a discussion with Dylan Matthews (a Harvard undergraduate who seems to be a pundit-in-training) and Jonathan Alter (of MSNBC) about how Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, might be trying to change welfare regulations. Here's how it went:

Mickey Kaus: @dylanmatt @jonathanalter she won't recreate AFDC but she may contradict "work first" and send signal that it's OK to go on welfare again.

Daniel Altman: @kausmickey @dylanmatt @jonathanalter It *is* okay to go on welfare. Why would you stigmatize people who do? Shameful to get Medicaid, too?

Mickey Kaus: @altmandaniel @dylanmatt @jonathanalter As long as welfare (+ foodstamps) R available 2 people who don't work they'll rightly be stigmatized

Mickey Kaus: @altmandaniel @dylanmatt @jonathanalter Also AFDC was epic social disaster for ghettoized poor. We don't want it to grow again if possible.

Daniel Altman: @kausmickey @dylanmatt @jonathanalter Punishing people w/stigma is not how 2 prevent this. Why stigmatize 4 something often not their fault?

The exchange ended there. I was shocked that anyone would suggest that people could be "rightly" stigmatized for receiving welfare benefits. For most people who receive benefits, it's not that they don't want to work. As Rebecca Blank, the new Secretary of Commerce, has written, most mothers who receive benefits face multiple barriers to working (http://www.npc.umich.edu/publications/policy_briefs/brief10/policy_brief10.pdf). Several of these barriers, such as health problems and domestic violence, are often beyond the mothers' control. To stigmatize them for receiving welfare benefits is to blame them unfairly for these barriers to work.

Kaus's callous and ill-informed comments echo a continuing strand of Republican economic philosophy: the idea that we live in a complete meritocracy. If that were true, then the only things affecting access to economic opportunities would be talent and effort. But that's not true. Many people are shut out of opportunities because of factors beyond their control, and many others are beaten out by people with more money and connections. For all of them, poverty is undeserved. To stigmatize these people for accepting the benefits that keep roofs over their heads and food in their children's mouths is both ignorant and cruel.

For more on the fallacies of Republican economic philosophy, please check out my new eBook, "SABOTAGE: How the Republican Party Crippled America's Economic Recovery" (http://www.amazon.com/SABOTAGE-Republican-Crippled-Americas-ebook/dp/B008LMNDYO).