Though laden with special-interest corporate tax breaks and faulted by Treasury Secretary John Snow for favoring overseas operations, the legislation will help Cincinnati-based multinationals such as Procter & Gamble and General Electric compete globally, and should resolve a trade dispute with the European Union, which has raised punitive tariffs on some U.S. goods to 12 percent. President Bush should sign it.

The bill also includes a $10.1 billion buyout of Depression-era tobacco crop quotas. That's good for Kentucky and Ohio tobacco farmers, although both houses of Congress dumped an offsetting measure to let the Food and Drug Administration regulate tobacco products.

Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, dropped his objections when he was promised a separate vote on FDA regulation. The House didn't include FDA regulation of tobacco in its corporate tax bill last week. The New York Times reported Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., blasted the Senate package as "the worst example of the influence of special-interest groups I have ever seen."

By a 69-17 vote, the Senate approved about $140 billion in tax breaks offset by closing some corporate tax loopholes and raising other revenues. In exchange for ending U.S. export tax breaks that the World Trade Organization ruled illegal in 2002, the Senate bill cuts the top tax rate by three percentage points to 32 percent for U.S. manufacturers who engage in "domestic production." It's expected to save them almost $77 billion over 10 years.

Multinationals also are granted a one-year, one-time "window" to bring home billions in overseas earnings at a 5.25 percent tax rate - about one-seventh of what they would be taxed otherwise. Congress hopes those billions flowing back home will spur development and other investment.

The bill tries to crack down on loopholes that let companies dodge U.S. taxes by reincorporating at a post office box offshore. Supporters named it the "American Jobs Creation Act of 2004" and hailed it for simplifying labyrinthine tax rules imposed on multinationals. No one should mistake this bill for across-the-board tax simplification. U.S. Rep. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, intends to continue to push for tax simplification next year.

The lobbying got especially ugly in the context of home-district tax breaks, even as Congress tightened deduction rules for donating cars to charities and dropped a proposed $2.5 billion tax break for employers of National Guard and reserve troops. Senate leaders attached that tax proposal to a different bill. Nine of 13 annual spending bills, including the high-stakes six-year highway construction bill, must wait now until the lame-duck session after elections.

The 2004 corporate tax bill is the most ambitious in almost 20 years and far from perfect, but warts and all, it does deliver significant corporate tax relief in support of U.S. jobs.