WASHINGTON -- One of the chief sponsors of federal tobacco-control legislation said yesterday that he intends to try to push the bill through Congress this year and won't wait for the possibility of a more sympathetic president next year.

"We're going to try to get this to the president, and we hope he'll sign it," Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said in an interview.

President Bush, through administration officials, has expressed opposition to Waxman's proposal to give the federal Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco products. A similar bill, by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., is pending in the Senate.

Some Democratic strategists have talked about delaying some key legislation in hopes of gaining more seats in the House and Senate -- and perhaps a Democratic president -- in the November elections.

A House subcommittee yesterday began deliberations on Waxman's FDA-tobacco control legislation, which he has tried to pass for two decades.

No previous House panel had ever considered such a proposal, said Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

Waxman's bill has 219 co-sponsors, but none of them are from tobacco-producing Kentucky.

Kennedy's measure, approved last year by his Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has 55 co-sponsors, but Kentucky's senators are not among them.

Both bills would give the FDA the authority to stop tobacco marketing and sales to children, require the disclosure of ingredients in tobacco products and require larger warnings about tobacco's health dangers on cigarette packs.

The legislation also explicitly bars the FDA from regulating tobacco growers or sending inspectors onto farms where the leaf is grown.

"This is a historic day in the fight against tobacco, but it has taken us far too long to get here," Waxman told his colleagues.

Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., chairman of the full House Energy and Commerce Committee, praised Waxman's efforts, saying "public health organizations have fought 20 years for this legislation."

But some Republicans said that they were concerned that the FDA already was underfunded and poorly equipped to deal with threats to the safety of the nation's food supply and drugs.

Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, a doctor, said giving the FDA responsibility for regulating tobacco would erode the agency's core missions.

Waxman's bill was "a travesty," Burgess said, intended to provide "red meat for a few constituences and the media."

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