WASHINGTON — As Mayor Bloomberg scolded the federal government for “foolishness” in allocating homeland security grants, the city’s congressional delegation is gearing up to use its greater political weight in a Democratic majority to bring more anti-terror dollars to the five boroughs.

Testifying before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, the mayor lambasted both Congress and the Bush administration for enacting regulations and formulas that he said limit the city’s ability to collect its fair share of security funding.

Mr. Bloomberg and other city officials have long called for the Department of Homeland Security to dole out its annual grant money based on risk level alone, criticizing the government for reserving a portion of the pot for localities across the country that appear to face little threat of a terrorist attack.

While the Bush administration has taken steps recently to increase threat-based funding, it has not gone far enough, Mr. Bloomberg said yesterday.

“Instead, we have seen huge sums of homeland security money spread across the country like peanut butter,” he told the committee.

The policy has led to wasteful spending, the mayor said, citing as an example one town that used anti-terror money to construct a “custom-built trailer” for an annual mushroom festival in October. “Al Qaeda must be laughing all the way to their tents,” Mr. Bloomberg said.

In a shift last week, the Department of Homeland Security announced that New York and five other major urban areas would share 55% of the $747 million grant fund. But Mr. Bloomberg said that wouldn’t amount to a major increase over last year’s funding for the city, which was down 40% from 2005.

The city got some better news from the department yesterday when it announced separate grants to protect ports and transit systems. Of the nearly half a billion given out, New York and New Jersey got $27.2 million for port security and $61 million for transit, the largest share for any region in the nation.

The mayor’s testimony came as members of the city’s congressional delegation championed passage last night in the House of a bill to implement many of the recommendations of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. The measure is one of a half dozen that Democrats have pledged to pass in their first 100 hours of power in Congress.

With the city’s two senators and all but one of its House members now in the majority party, New York lawmakers are aiming to have more influence over funding decisions in the 110th Congress. That the Democratic leadership chose a bill with such close ties to the city as part of its “100 hour” initiative demonstrates the delegation’s enhanced power, Rep. Carolyn Maloney of Manhattan and Queens said.

The measure passed last night includes a change in the homeland security funding formula to make allocations based more upon risk.

Some lawmakers have said that a nationwide homeland security funding system is appropriate, suggesting that terrorists will not always aim for iconic structures like the Empire State Building or the Brooklyn Bridge but could go after the nation’s food supply by attacking farm land, or strike a crowded arena or mall in Middle America. Mr. Bloomberg challenged that claim directly in his testimony before the Senate: “Do not confuse risks with targets. Every place there are risks, but there aren’t that many targets and targets are what the enemies of this country will focus on.”

A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, Jarrod Agen, said the secretary, Michael Chertoff, supported allocating grants based on risk. But he added: “We can’t completely ignore the rest of the country.”

The mayor has pleaded his case for more funding in Washington several times before, but this was his first time speaking before the new Democratic Congress. He has a now-powerful ally in Senator Lieberman, the new chairman of the Homeland Security Committee whom the mayor helped win a tough re-election fight last year. The two were effusive in praising each other at the outset of the hearing, but it is unclear how much assistance Mr. Lieberman, an Independent Democrat of Connecticut, will provide the mayor.

During a break in the hearing, Mr. Lieberman called Mr. Bloomberg’s testimony “important,” and he signaled agreement with the mayor’s distinction between areas of risk and targets. But he pointed to the limited overall pot of available anti-terror grant money, which has dropped significantly in recent years. “I think if we begin to raise that back up, the distinctions we have about exactly how to evaluate risk are going to be less divisive, because the city’s going to get more money, which it deserves,” Mr. Lieberman told reporters.

The Senate committee hearing focused on its own proposal to implement recommendations from the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, and Mr. Bloomberg testified alongside three members of that panel, including the vice chairman, Lee Hamilton. Mr. Lieberman said he hoped to move a bill out of committee by the end of the month.

In a statement yesterday, Senator Clinton echoed the mayor’s testimony, saying the city and other high-risk areas were inadequately funded. “We need threat-based funding, and I will continue to press for its implementation,” she said.

While New York lawmakers expressed confidence that the city would have a louder voice in Washington with a Democratic Congress, some cautioned against unrealistic expectations. “It’s still going to be a fight. It’s not going to be easy,” Rep. Anthony Weiner, who represents parts of Queens and Brooklyn, said.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, whose district includes Lower Manhattan, pointed to the White House. “I don’t really expect fairness from the Bush administration, or rationality or intelligence on this,” he said. He later added: “We have more power. We have more influence. But we don’t control.”

And as for Mayor Bloomberg, when asked if the city would fare better under the new Congress, he responded: “Only time will tell.”