WASHINGTON – President Bush sharpened his attack yesterday against senators who blocked reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act, zeroing in on a handful of lawmakers from New York and other target-rich states.

In remarks during an hour-long White House press conference, Mr. Bush said it is “inexcusable” for senators to ask the administration to monitor and capture terrorists while at the same time preventing it from carrying out the effort by blocking what he described as a “vital tool.” Mr. Bush’s attack included an indirect reference to New York’s Democratic senators, Senator Clinton and Senator Schumer, who on Friday sided with a filibuster of the reauthorization of the act, which stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.

“I want senators from New York or Los Angeles or Las Vegas to go home and explain why these cities are safer,” Mr. Bush said. “It is inexcusable to say, on the one hand, connect the dots, and not give us a chance to do so.”

The Patriot Act, which passed the Senate by a vote of 98-1 in the weeks following the September 11, 2001, attacks, is set to expire at the end of the month. The bill’s reauthorization was approved by the House of Representatives but held up when Republicans in the Senate could not muster the 60 votes required to break a Democratic filibuster.

Congressional staffers said last night that the Senate will not take the bill up again before the end of the year.

Senators Clinton and Schumer defended their decision to block the bill.

Mr. Schumer issued a statement saying he blocked it because it does not require the Department of Homeland Security to distribute federal anti-terrorism funds according to risk. The current funding formula dictates that each state should receive no less than .75% of the entire pool of federal dollars. The House of Representatives passed a bill in May that would reduce the minimum amount states receive to .25%.

A Republican congressman from Long Island, Rep. Peter King, has pressed the Senate to authorize a change in the formula, but the Republican chairman of the Senate’s Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Senator Collins of Maine, has resisted a change that would give any state less than .55% of the entire pool.

“The president glosses over a fundamental flaw in the bill: that it shortchanges New York and our national security by sending homeland security funds to places where they are not needed,” Mr. Schumer said. He said that until a change in the funding formula is made, he supports extending the Patriot Act by three months.

Mrs. Clinton also said she supports extending the Patriot Act, defending her backing of the filibuster for the same reason as Mr. Schumer. In a statement to The New York Sun, Mrs. Clinton urged Mr. Bush to press his colleagues in the Senate to change the funding formula if he wants the legislation extended.

“I support extending the Patriot Act, but it must strike the proper balance between securing our safety and ensuring our freedom and must be changed to protect places like New York that face the greatest threat and risk,” Mrs. Clinton said. “If President Bush is truly concerned about New York, he should stop letting his Republican Congressional colleagues use these funds for pork barrel projects, and instead allocate them on the basis of real threat and risk.”

In his press conference, Mr. Bush defended himself against criticism of a recently disclosed terrorism surveillance program that allows the National Security Agency to monitor e-mails and phone conversations between America and overseas. The New York Times re ported the existence of the four-year old program on Friday.

“I understand people’s concerns,” Mr. Bush said. “But I also want to assure the American people that I am doing what you expect me to do, which is to safeguard civil liberties and at the same time protect the United States of America.”

Mr. Bush said that he intends to continue using the surveillance program and suggested that its critics in Congress are disingenuous, even as he called critics of the war itself “good, solid Americans.” Mr. Bush said he does not think that people who “play politics with the Patriot Act” are thinking of what is in the best interests of the country.

Keeping with the themes he has sounded in five speeches over the past three weeks, Mr. Bush acknowledged mistakes in Iraq but defended the war overall. Mr. Bush cited the December 15 elections in Iraq as a sign that his vision of defeating terrorists through democratic reforms in the Middle East is being vindicated.

“What you’re seeing now is a historic moment because I believe that democracies will spread,” Mr. Bush said. “I believe when people get the taste for freedom or see a neighbor with a taste for freedom, they will demand the same thing because I believe in the universality of freedom.”

Democrats branded Mr. Bush’s press conference and his recent speeches on the war as a public relations effort aimed at deflecting questions about the constitutionality of the NSA surveillance program.

“With his credibility in tatters, President Bush may have fielded questions, but he failed to explain why he may have ignored both federal law and the Constitution in ordering the NSA to spy on Americans,” the communications director of the Democratic National Committee, Karen Finney, said in a statement. “This disturbing abuse of power has become a disturbing hallmark of the Bush administration over the past five years.”