There is a significant segment of American society that believes that if you are poor you must have done something to deserve it, like not work hard enough. Because of this, to help poor people is to subsidize (and hence encourage) laziness, and that is unacceptable. On the other hand, we can't just shoot all the poor people (though we can shoot some of them, as long as they're black and threatening) and we can't just have them loitering in the streets because that's bad for business. So the best we can do it run them out of town on a rail. Out of sight, not our problem any more, that's good enough. We don't need a long-term solution, we just need to stave off disaster long enough for Jesus to return, and that will be Real Soon Now.

Sadly, this is not an exaggeration. Tens of millions of Americans really do believe all of the above.