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With two-thirds of Hawaii's AFDC recipients being children, Roth frames the 1994 welfare debate as fundamentally a children's issue. Winona Rubin, who has led the Department of Human Services for seven and a half years, supports Clinton's reform proposals — two-year benefit limits, mandatory work plans, required school attendance — and reports that when the Jobs program was offered voluntarily, 80 percent of eligible clients enrolled, suggesting recipients want self-sufficiency rather than dependency. Tess Holam endorses the push toward employment but insists it must be paired with livable wages, childcare, and birth control access. She notes the Jobs program received funding for only 11 percent of eligible participants nationally and that the Holly Keepa emergency shelter for abused and runaway youth was just shuttered despite turning away 35 children a month. Roth confronts Rubin with data showing DHS staffing shrank 24 percent over eight years while the rest of state government grew 41 percent. Holam stresses that welfare families average just two children — the same as non-welfare families — challenging assumptions about dependency culture. Callers raise concerns about teen pregnancy, pop culture, and the father's largely absent role in public policy discussions.
Transcript
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