But, then, what's a little capitulation to the faceless mandarins of the World Trade Organization when the bill is also a corporate lobbyist's dream? Especially if you are a company that wants to buy cheaper tobacco from farmers and face no new federal restrictions in selling it to your children.

At its core, the bill is a repeal of tax breaks for big American exporters, tax breaks that the WTO was frankly justified in rejecting. If Congress didn't repeal the rules that made it more profitable for U.S. manufacturers to sell stuff overseas, European Union nations were allowed to impose higher and higher tariffs on U.S.-made goods.

Simply repealing those tax breaks would have ended the trade war and increased federal revenue just when it is most needed to fight domestic deficits and international terrorism. But that was, apparently, too easy.

So Congress took four years larding up the bill with other corporate tax goodies, lowering the top tax rate for manufacturers and widening the definition of manufacturing to include not only outfits that make cars and TVs but also companies that produce movies and roast coffee.

Various tax breaks and closed loopholes supposedly add up to a zero net effect on the federal deficit. But the package does nothing to make the tax code either more fair or simpler.

Worst of all is the fact that Congress, reportedly with White House support, took what had been a reasonable deal with the devil and turned it into all devil and no deal.

As passed by the Senate in July, the package included a long-overdue provision that would give the Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate - but not ban - the sale and advertising of cigarettes. In return, the Senate would buy out $10 billion in Depression-era, price-inflating quotas held by tobacco farmers, and pay for it by assessing a fee on cigarette manufacturers. Utah's Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett were on record favoring the deal.

House leaders, though, don't want to regulate tobacco, and Senate conference committee members, including Hatch, caved. So the quota buy-out lives but FDA authority is dead. Now big tobacco companies will raise their prices a penny a pack to buy out the quotas, enjoy paying lower prices for raw tobacco because the number of growers is no longer capped and face no increased restrictions on the tactics they can use to make or sell their deathsticks.

But the bill passes the all-important global test set by the WTO. How refreshingly multilateral of us.