A young single mom from Austin, testifying this morning about what a child abuse- and welfare-prevention program has meant for her, held her baby daughter in her lap.
As Maggie Barcellano concluded her remarks about the Nurse-Family Partnership, Sen. Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa, the vice chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, asked:
"What's your daughter's name?"
Barcellano replied, "Her name's Zoemae."
Hinojosa, D-McAllen (above, staff photo), began to ask about Zoemae's age. Suddenly, the infant squealed into the microphone, startling just about everyone in a packed committee room.
"Well, she testified," Hinojosa said, to much laughter.
In a witness chair beside Barcellona, Madeline McClure, a big promoter of the Nurse-Family Partnership program, didn't miss a beat.
"She just said don't cut my program," said McClure, head of Dallas-based TexProtects, an advocacy group for abused and neglected children.
Hinojosa replied, "That's what she said, that's right."
The program, which pairs visiting nurses with teens who are pregnant for the first time and at risk of all sorts of bad things, would lose half its funding in the Senate's tentative budget. In Texas, it debuted at the YWCA of Metropolitan Dallas a few years ago and now is offered at Parkland Memorial Hospital and 10 other sites across the state.
Source: http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2011/02/baby-squeals-testifies-as-sena.html
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