Early Hearing Detection and Intervention Act of 2017

Statement

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Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

The gentlewoman from California (Ms. Matsui) and I have worked on a lot of issues together, and it is always a pleasure to work with her and to move important things forward. I know a lot of times you see a lot of big issues need to be addressed, but a lot of things are getting done here in the House.

Today, once we pass this bill, it goes to the President. It is coming back from the Senate, so it goes to the President.

My interest in this is when I was in the General Assembly of Kentucky, the Governor had a big proposal dealing with children in the first 3 years of their life and was looking at a lot of money to be spent. And I remember doing research on a site. I found a report from a doctor from Vanderbilt, and I went down and met with her. So there has been a lot of debate on the research of some of the things that we were looking at moving forward.

She said: In normal stimulation, a child is going to rise to their ability.

But she did say this: If you took a healthy baby and put it into a closet with no light, and it couldn't hear, and pull it out 3 years later--which obviously you couldn't do that--it wouldn't be able to see and it would never be able to develop its hearing because the brain does start adjusting at a young age.

That is why you can learn a language far better as a child than you can as an adult.

So I was driving back, and part of what Governor Patton of Kentucky had proposed was screening, eyesight screening, and early childhood hearing detection as part of the bill. So a lot of us were saying: ``What do you do with mandates?''

I was driving back, and I remember thinking, well, if you were born and you can't see well, if you were born and you can't hear well, then isn't that the same thing as being put in a dark closet? Because if you don't figure out till you show up to school that you can't hear well, then you have lost those first 3 to 5 years of ability and lost language ability for a lifetime.

So for the small amount of money that it actually costs, we passed and authorized, in Kentucky, mandated screenings. One is for eyesight, which my son got caught in going into kindergarten. That is the first time you can really test them, when we gather them, but you can test newborns at birth. If you can find a newborn at birth that has a hearing impairment and get it corrected, it will develop just like all the other healthy children, so why not do it?

So I got to Washington, D.C. It is a national program. It is not something I came up with. It was authored before, so we are here today to reauthorize it.

I just want to point out this program is a success. In 2000, 40 percent of newborns were screened for hearing loss. That number rose to over 86 percent in 2011. In 2015, CDC has reported that roughly 97 percent of infants are screened for hearing loss. Think of the difference that makes in these children's lives when we catch them.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Congresswoman Matsui. I want to thank Senator Kaine from Virginia and Senator Portman from Ohio for taking the bipartisan lead in the Senate. I thank them for their hard work.

I am proud to say, when we take this vote today, it doesn't go back to the Senate. It goes to the President, and we look forward to his signature and continuing this in moving forward. I have been honored to be part of this.
Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Burgess for yielding.

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