A historic opportunity to bring tobacco under the regulation of the Food and Drug Administration has been missed.

The failure, though, should not be laid at the feet of a single United States senator, namely Maine’s Olympia Snowe. It starts with the House and Senate leadership, and trickles right through the minority leader.

Earlier this year, Congress was faced with a relatively simple – if expensive – problem. A tax break to U.S. exporters was putting the country at odds with the World Trade Organization. The WTO ruled that Europe could impose tariffs on U.S. goods until the issue was resolved. Next year alone, the duties could have amounted to $660 million, punishment for a $5 billion tax break.

Solution: Eliminate the tax break and make it up to exporters in other ways.

What happened next is testimony to the backward ways things sometimes work in Congress.

Because the problem really has to be fixed, lawmakers made haste to attach every nature of pork to the corporate tax bill. Frustrated by a Republican leadership that stymies many quality bills, others attached non-germane, but important, riders.

A hodgepodge of tax fixes, irresponsible pork and solid legislation emerged.

Included in the mix was a provision that would have given oversight for tobacco products to the FDA. In the Senate, lawmakers attached the oversight provision to a buyout for tobacco farmers that would have ended the inefficient quota-subsidy system that currently exists. A House version of the bill contained the buyout, but no FDA oversight.

Snowe was one of only four Republicans to support FDA oversight. She supported the amendment in conference committee, where differences between the House and Senate version of the law were ironed out.

In the end, FDA oversight of tobacco lost out. It wasn’t included in the legislation that now goes back to the House and Senate for approval.

According to Snowe’s office, she accepted the conference report grudgingly. There were other provisions in the bill that outweighed the tobacco issue.

One of those fixes a quirk in the tax law that hurts Bath Iron Works by requiring the shipbuilder to pay taxes on its revenue before it receives payment from the federal government. The change isn’t a tax break; it only delays the due date on the taxes.

Another provision makes softwood lumber producers eligible to be counted as manufacturers and allows timber companies to write off the first $10,000 of reforestation costs.

The corporate tax bill extends a special tax credit to biomass facilities, which turn wood waste into green energy. And there are elements of the law that help small businesses.

None of this has anything to do with the trade dispute with Europe, but because the House and Senate have become so dysfunctional, many good – and bad – ideas have no other avenue to see daylight.

Giving the FDA power over tobacco was one of the shining lights in this huge tangle of ideas. It was not, however, a deal breaker for Snowe. It’s easy to see why some people say it should have been.

In the end, several Democrats on the conference committee, including Minority Leader Tom Daschle, allowed FDA oversight to slip away.

Snowe still supports efforts to put tobacco under FDA authority. So do we. We hope there will be another opportunity.

It’s also understandable to see why Snowe put Bath Iron Works and its workers – 1,400 in Androscoggin County alone – ahead of tobacco regulation. It’s a difficult choice created by imperious congressional leaders, especially in the House, who manipulate the system for their own purposes.

We’ve hated this bill since its devilish birth. We hate it more without the tobacco provision. But we understand the choice.