On the recordOctober 3, 2017
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.…
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