What this is all about is government willing to not protect the health and welfare of their own citizens.

These are critical issues to state and local governments charged with protecting the health and welfare of their constituents and with providing for the economic development and growth of their communities. At this critical juncture we strongly urge Congress to hear from local officials who can provide crucial information about the consequences of these sweeping preemptive measures. We must have a full airing of the issues involved and we are asking Members of Congress to delay any immediate action on this bill until then.

Basically, they call it health and welfare traffic and what they've been doing over, probably, the last seven days, is if they can get information, they will try and locate an individual. It helps to have phone numbers, last known locations and if they made it to a shelter.

The data show that, here in Missouri, we continue to fail to put the health and welfare of our children first.

I am for doing good to the poor, but...I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed...that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

I believe this housing issue has brought our community to a tipping point, ... We're compromising our health, safety and welfare.