By Donald Grove, Casey Research Washington Correspondent:

What are the goals of the Obama administration? What motivates this president and his circle of close advisors?

His signature issue is health care reform. Close on the heels of health care is climate change. Does President Obama's heart throb with the vision of healthy Americans enjoying affordable, high-quality health care, free from the looming specter of global warming?

Not likely.

Obama is said to be smart and, if so, he must realize that a dog's breakfast of deals, compromises, penalties, rewards, and unintended consequences clumsily cobbled together in 1,990 pages of health care legislation will not produce an idyllic outcome. Same with cap-and-trade. The proposed legislation is absurdly complex and, of course, based on false premises.

So why is the president so determined to push these programs through?

Change was the hallmark of the Obama campaign, but change to what? After nine months of observing his administration in action, it is fair to say that the prize, the goals that motivate our president, are indeed – as we suspected – expansion of government and redistribution of wealth. Health care reform and climate change legislation are just means to those ends.

We knew this during the campaign. We knew who his friends were. We knew his record and the series of leftist roles that brought him to the presidency. It should come as no surprise that he would contrive crises and lead voters to believe that only more government can save them. White House Communications Director Anita Dunn recently reminded us that: "He's who he has always been."

Obama said: "My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody. I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

In a 2001 interview, he explained that the civil rights movement and the Warren Supreme Court did not go far enough to "break free of the essential constraints placed by the founding fathers and the Constitution." He said the civil rights movement's focus on the Supreme Court resulted in losing track of "political and community organizing activities... that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change."

In that interview, Obama lamented the fact that the Constitution "says what the federal government can't do to you, but doesn't say what the federal government... must do on your behalf." He felt that redistribution of wealth would not be achieved through the courts but could through legislation, which is where we are now.

Professor Cass Sunstein, Obama's new regulatory czar, said: "It is even possible that desirable redistribution is more likely to occur through climate change policy than otherwise." A similar argument was made by Obama's green czar and self-professed communist Van Jones, and by NASA climatologist James Hansen, often cited by Al Gore, who urged Obama to enact a tax on carbon emissions that would take money from higher-income Americans and distribute the proceeds directly to the less fortunate.

Thankfully, it appears the president will not be going to Copenhagen for the climate change summit in December, so we can breathe a little easier about the redistributive theme and threats to our national sovereignty embodied in the proposed comprehensive climate change treaty.

Health care "reform," like climate change policy, is also little more than a wealth redistribution scheme. Insurers will have to sell insurance to everyone, regardless of their health status, but Congress will prevent insurers from charging commensurately higher premiums for the unhealthy. Instead, in the spirit of egalitarianism, everyone will pay more.

Naturally, if there is always time to buy insurance (even after the house is on fire), those who are young and healthy or just don't want to spend the money will wait. Oops. Congress has blocked that exit, too. This is kind of like tormenting ants. Under the "individual mandate," everyone has to buy insurance. Trapped. There will be fines for not buying health insurance. Yet the president insists this is not a tax.

A tax by any other name…

Employers may have to reduce wages to meet health care obligations, which shrinks workers' paychecks just as surely as a tax. Expensive "Cadillac" health insurance policies may be subject to an excise tax, which has unions up in arms.

I have been told that things are so complex today we need career politicians who are capable of negotiating the complicated compromises that are necessary to enact legislation. Not true. This horse trading adds complexity but not value.

For example, doctors demand medical malpractice lawsuit reform and are threatened with huge cuts in Medicare reimbursement while the administration makes false accusations that doctors perform unnecessary surgeries just for profit. Then there are separate legislator proposals to increase doctors' Medicare payments in order to offset losses to doctors in the health care bills and keep the health care bills budget neutral.

Legislators are also at odds over the "public option." Senator Tom Coburn forced an amendment in the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) that would require members of Congress to enroll in whatever public plan was enacted to compete with private insurance companies. His colleagues protested that no one else had to participate in the public plan, so why should they? Coburn countered that everyone would wind up in the public plan as private insurers were forced out of business. The amendment was adopted in committee, but I can guarantee you that no one expects it to survive in any health bill that finally becomes law.

There's more.

Medicaid coverage is being increased, which puts a burden on the states. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) has carved out an exclusion for his state. Now Mary Landrieu (D-La) wants the same exclusion. It's a patchwork quilt of "special" provisions. Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Mo) wants senior citizens who live off investment earnings to pay Medicare premiums. Everyone has a pet issue, but no one sees the big picture. Some voters have asked legislators to slow down and not try to cram everything into one bill. Others have wisely suggested that Congress do nothing at all.

No one is advancing a unified, sensible plan in Americans' best interests. The Obama administration has shown an odd indifference to details of these bills, leaving much of the work to Congress.

The message from this chaos is clear. As Doug Casey pointed out, most if not all of what is wrong with health care can be attributed to the government. Hippocrates admonished, "As to diseases, make a habit of two things – to help, or at least to do no harm." If Congress took that guidance to heart, it would seek to reform health care by undoing the harm it has already done rather than ineptly compounding it.

Barry Goldwater said, "My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them, it is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution." Unfortunately Americans found his views just too radical and opted for Lyndon Johnson instead.

Fortunately, Congressman Ron Paul (R-Tx), a medical doctor and a voice crying in the wilderness, has introduced a collection of bills to shield us from this insanity, basically defusing one by one the key features of health care legislation being debated by the rest of Congress.

Will Obama succeed in burdening the nation with these senseless programs? It depends on how quickly Americans become aware of the scam that is being perpetrated against them. Not surprisingly, the Senate Finance Committee rejected a proposal to post its health care bill online for 72 hours before a vote. None of the health care plans now in the mix, nor proposed cap-and-trade legislation, can actually improve the quality of our lives. That's why we are told that it is urgent to get these programs in place – because the longer they are subject to scrutiny, the worse they look.

Quoting Martin Luther King, Obama warns that "we cannot wait any longer. There comes a time to remember the 'fierce urgency' of right now."

The Federalist Society has a regular lunch with a speaker on the top floor of Tony Cheng's restaurant in China Town here in DC. I recently went to hear Senator Tom Coburn talk about health care. He reluctantly predicted that health care "reform" will pass. I hope he's wrong. A recent favorable report from the Congressional Budget Office gave health care reform a boost. Too bad. Coburn explained that the CBO is notoriously bad at estimating the cost of programs; their estimates are invariably much too low.

I am impressed with the arrogance of legislators in disregarding strong opposition to these measures. I believe the polls now show a majority opposed to current health care reform legislation but in support of cap-and-trade. The fact that it is close should give lawmakers pause, but apparently it does not.

I am disturbed that we are seeing an adversarial relationship developing between the government and the governed. I would not even give them credit for doing what they believe is best for us. Our representatives are just wheeling and dealing, and constituents be damned.

For me, the real bottom line here is just a question of what we can afford and honesty. We know these programs won't save money. They will add to our tax and debt burden. Tom Coburn pointed out that there are huge ethical problems with stealing money from our unborn children (he's delivered over 4,000 babies).

Let's be real. We're broke.

Spending this money is theft by fraud at worst, by ignorance at best. I am looking forward to a rout in 2010.

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