1X
Susan Chandler, days into her new role overseeing DHS's $860 million budget, and Tom Dinell, director of Catholic Charities Hawaii, take stock of human services in a year of mounting fiscal pressure. Chandler defends the Jobs program against a state auditor's finding of roughly $100,000 spent per successful placement, arguing the audit measures exits rather than lasting self-sufficiency; participants often need years of remedial education before any job will lift them out of poverty. Dinell agrees the real problem is poverty itself, not welfare, and calls for far more flexibility in how funds are deployed. Both guests push back on the claim that welfare payments encourage childbearing, citing research and noting that the number of children per welfare family mirrors the general population. Debate turns sharper on the Republican-led push to convert federal entitlements into capped block grants: Chandler sees philosophical appeal but warns that without federal floors, states may divert dollars to other priorities. Callers raise drug addiction, the shortage of treatment slots, neglect of the elderly in the long-term care system, and grassroots cooperative approaches to job creation that DHS has not yet engaged.
Transcript
Read or download the full transcript (.txt). Speaker labels were assigned automatically and may contain errors.