Ironically, if President Bush is perceived to be pandering to ethnic constituencies, big-business interests, and single-minded tax-cut advocates at the expense of his commitment to rebuild the U.S. military and restore American power, he runs a serious risk not only of undermining national security.
But Mr Cameron accused the PM of "catastrophic misjudgements" on the economy and attacked the proposed NI increase as a "tax on jobs that hits every singlebusiness in the country".
Our own Steve Forbes has argued that one way to clean up the tax code and expose hidden taxes is through the adoption of a federal "flat" tax, a single rate for individuals and business that would eliminate most of the deductions and exemptions now in place.
We could fix this very fundamental problem of our income tax system without raising rates or affecting a single small business owner, and we might raise a few hundred billion dollars along the way.
One reason seems to be that these efforts have generally relied on a single silver bullet, such as tax breaks from the government or small-business incubators set up by venture capitalists.