Congressional friends of the tobacco industry are promising to press a fight over an amendment submitted late last week in the House and Senate that would kill a $50 billion tax credit to the industry. Tobacco’s foes should willingly continue that fight: Time and public opinion are on their side.

The Senate amendment to remove the credit, sponsored by Sens. Richard Durbin of Illinios and Maine’s Susan Collins, passed yesterday 95-3. The amendment was crafted after GOP leaders slipped the $50 billion credit into the budget, offsetting a 15-cent-per-pack tax and, essentially, reducing the amount of money the industry would pay in its settlement with 40 state attorneys general. When this line of the budget was revealed, the public immediately saw the credit for what it was: An attempt by tobacco-owned members of Congress to force taxpayers to pay for some of the settlement.

Nevertheless, some House members, including Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, continue to defend the credit and say that without it they will not vote for the settlement. Backers of the Senate amendment, which included Sen. Olympia Snowe, properly called their bluff. Risking the settlement is no risk at all if the deal would not force the industry to adequately cover the medical costs now borne by the states.

Big Tobacco still owns enough of Congress to defeat votes that common sense would say should pass easily. A bill last session that would have funded the Food and Drug Administration’s program to reduce underage smoking was trounced in the House and Senate. At the same time, representatives from tobacco-growing states made sure Congress preserved tobacco’s crop-insurance program. This two-part strategy of keeping the money ready for farmers but starving any program that might keep kids from getting addicted will continue to be successful for as long as the industry supplies campaign money.

Sens. Durbin and Collins in a recent statement summed up the public’s fears about the states agreeing to the $368 billion settlement with the tobacco companies: “Not only can the tobacco companies write off the entire $368 billion as a business expense,” they wrote, “which means that 30 to 40 percent of the tobacco companies’ settlement costs will be subsidized by the taxpayers, but now Congress, in a moment of `midnight madness,’ has carved out a new tax break for these campanies that effectively reduces the value of the proposed settlement by $50 billion.”

Opponents of tobacco interests have nothing to lose by insisting that the industry pay the full amount of the agreement with the states, submit to added regulation to reduce underage smoking and control nicotine as a drug. The release of key documents in the last two years showing both the industry’s understanding of the health hazard its product represents and its determination to market the product to children removes their legal cover for future suits. The industry needs a settlement more than the states do.