Several news stories landed today on the “First Tee” earmark — mine was among them. Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), who requested a $3 million earmark for the program out of the Department of Defense appropriations bill, took to the House floor to defend the program today.

From the congressman’s speech:

“Not one dime of this request will go to any civilian facility in South Carolina or anywhere else in the United States of America. Every single dime of this is to be spent on defense facilities to the benefit of those children whose mothers and fathers are off defending our way of life, so that their children can have the same kind of opportunities that our children have. And I find it a little bit insulting that we said we were going to reserve this kind of activity for the elite and not make it available to the children of the men and women who are preserving our way of life.
“We know who is fighting this war. Rural, low-income families are carrying the burden of this war. I think we’ve got a responsibility here to say to their children, we are going to treat you the same way we treat the kids downtown. If the kids in downtown Sumter, my hometown, can have a First Tee program, I want those kids at Shaw Air Force base 10 miles away, to have the same kind of program.”

So what to say about “First Tee?” It helps children. It sounds like it is a very worthy cause. In fact, it is worthy enough that its parent foundation already has a $20 million budget that it raises every year from private sponsors and operations such as its World Golf Hall of Fame at the World Golf Village (click here to reserve two nights, two rounds of golf, a facial, and a massage). According to Citizens Against Government Waste, the foundation has even advertised on national television during PGA events. It’s sponsored by Wal-Mart, Verizon and others.

The real question is whether Congress should throw millions of dollars at charities that already have private donors funding their activities. Does First Tee need to be paid from the military’s budget (with a secret earmark inserted in conference committee) before it can conduct charitable, character-building programs for military children? As Clyburn notes, these are the same programs that First Tee already conducts for civilian children, and somehow they do it without getting a $3 million earmark.

Don’t other people actually give money to help military families and veterans, instead of demanding money from the government in order to help them?

This applies to hundreds of the earmarks that go into federal appropriations. For example, does my alma mater, Notre Dame, with a 23.9 karat golden dome and a $5 billion dollar endowment raised from private sources, need a $231,000 earmark from taxpayers before it can do good for its surrounding community? Well, it is getting one this year.

It’s easy for a congressman (and nearly all of them are guilty of this) to be generous with other people’s money. But it is not charity. What ever happened to doing good without expecting a reward?