Rep. Chip Cravaack (Official portrait)

[A] lit­tle over­looked fact about Chip Cravaack is that he worked as a pilot for the North­west Air­lines as recently as 2007 and being a pilot means that you are a mem­ber of a Union, thus receiv­ing the ben­e­fits of union nego­ti­ated salaries, vaca­tions and ulti­mately, dis­abil­ity payments. Recent finan­cial records released by Cravaack showed that he received $92,273 in 2010 from dis­abil­ity pay­ments he received from North­west. At this very same time Cravaack was receiv­ing his checks, he was cam­paign­ing in Min­nesota promis­ing to end “big gov­ern­ment,” and often using the usual Repub­li­can talk­ing points of bash­ing unions. Oh, and by the way, Chip Cravaack is also a vet­eran, which means that in addi­tion to his gov­ern­ment pro­vided health care in Con­gress, he also gets ben­e­fits from the VA, allow­ing him to go to any government-owned Veteran’s Admin­is­tra­tion facil­ity in the nation and receive what he and Tea­party calls, “social­ized medicine.”

Tea party freshman Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-MN) will possibly regret caving to constituent demand and having actual open and free town meetings when word of this gets around to some of his constituents.

Of course, he also gets free health care from the Attending Physician of the United States Congress. Well, free to him. We, the taxpayers, are paying for that. For the record, it's fantastic that Cravaack had the opportunity to have workplace protections that are now helping in him out. Every worker should have that opportunity. And it's also great that served his country and he should get health care from it, as should all veterans.

But I kind of doubt that the tea party constituents who elected him are going to see it that way.