Tony Hall, just before leaving Congress in September, sat in his office in Longworth House Office Building and thought of something that had stuck with him since a trip to Appalachia. "I talked to mothers who lived in a trailer park, who told me their kids were excited when they brought home food," he said. "And I thought, kids should be excited about Christmas or something, they shouldn't be excited about getting food."

For twenty-four years, Hall, a Democrat representing Dayton, Ohio, was one of the few people in Congress who not only found such things strange but actually thought Congress should do something about people who didn't show up at the Thanksgiving table--or any other one. It was never what you'd call a widespread position, although an estimated 33 million Americans, along with 800 million people around the world, don't get enough to eat. "You don't have a spokesman for the poor in Congress," Hall said. "They don't have lobbyists, they don't have PACs. Hunger is not something you see unless you're looking for it. But they're out there. They're not dying in the streets, like they are in Africa, but they're out there."

Hall was chairman of the Congressional Select Committee on Hunger, and when its funding was cut in 1993, he fasted for three weeks until the House leadership agreed to set up a forum to discuss hunger, which later became the House Hunger Caucus. "If I was going to stay in Congress and look these people in the eye and not spit in it," he said at the time, "I decided I'd better do something." Afterward, he founded the Congressional Hunger Center. But after more than two decades in Congress, he said this summer, "We're still a long way away from making a major dent. It is one of the issues that is solvable. This one we can solve. We know what to do. It comes down to political will."

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