It's a maxim in Washington that no good deed goes unpunished. It seemed to the Scrapbook, therefore, that we should praise a genuine good deed when we came across it.
The deed was done by House majority leader Dick Armey on behalf of the Washington Scholarship Fund, headed by a young activist named Douglas Dewey. The fund provides scholarships to low-income District of Columbia children to attend the private school of their choice. It's currently helping some 225 kids from families with an average income of $ 15,000 go to over 60 area schools. The fund is able to pay half the tuition for these schools, up to $ 1,500 a year, partly because it insists that the families, however poor, come up with half the tuition themselves.
What Armey did was ask his own donors to give money to the fund at an event he headlined on June 26. The restaurant event raised more than $ 100,000, which will cover an additional 90-plus scholarships this fall. Armey sought no publicity for his efforts. And by troubling his own donors to give additional money to a good cause, he did something most politicians never do: He asked his donors to do something for others rather than give money to him. Well done.