Ohio Representative Urges `Freedom From Want' in US

TOO many Americans, especially children, are hungry and the government should do more to help them, a House committee chairman said Tuesday. Rep. Tony Hall (D) of Ohio, chairman of the House Select Committee on Hunger, says the government should expand the food stamp program - the nation's major anti-hunger program - and move to ``full funding'' of the Women, Infants, and Children Program (WIC), which now aids only about half of those eligible.

Drawing on Franklin Roosevelt's landmark speech on the ``four freedoms,'' Mr. Hall said the bill he intends to file later this month could be called the ``Freedom from Want'' bill.

A shift to full funding of the WIC program, which provides food and nutrition information to low-income women and their children, was estimated last year to cost an additional $1.8 billion.

Congress appropriated $19 billion for the food stamp program this fiscal year.