Republican senators squashed Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s attempt to keep the Trump administration from using funds set aside for the FBI headquarters for relocation anywhere other than Greenbelt.

Van Hollen has promised to fight the Trump administration’s plans to move the FBI headquarters to the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington.

The expected partisan tit-for-tat played out in the Senate Appropriations committee Thursday when a party-line vote advanced a Republican amendment to strip Van Hollen’s amendment — passed just last week with bipartisan support — out of a budget bill.

The Maryland Democrat said in the hearing he’d hoped his colleagues would have rejected the administration’s attempt to undo years of work by members of both parties.

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“My view is that we should be preserving decisions that we previously made,” he said.

Van Hollen’s amendment had nothing to do with where the FBI headquarters would be located but how money already set aside could be spent.

He reminded his colleagues, however, that the FBI site selection process was initiated by bipartisan members of Congress, conducted on a bipartisan basis and vetted through strict criteria to meet the mission and security needs of the FBI. Greenbelt was selected because it met the project specifications.

Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas said disagreement over Van Hollen’s amendment was holding up the panel’s budget process and proposed an amendment to carve it out.

“If we’re going to get this bipartisan bill out of committee, we need to address the amendment that cost us the votes to do so,” he said.

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Moran chairs the Commerce, Justice and Science subcommittee, and Van Hollen serves as ranking member. Their panel oversees the FBI’s budget, among other agencies.

Last week, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined Democrats in supporting Van Hollen’s amendment. On Thursday, she voted with Moran and fellow Republicans to take it out.

She said a conversation with FBI Director Kash Patel had changed her mind.

Van Hollen urged Patel not to “rush their move in” from the dilapidated J. Edgar Hoover Building in D.C. The funds — $555 million in previous years’ spending bills — initially set aside for the relocation are merely a down payment, he said.

“They’re going to need this committee for additional resources going forward,” he said.