Washington ? Despite soaring deficits, the government spending plan awaiting President Bush’s signature is chock-full of special items for industries and communities. Consider $443,000 to develop salmon-fortified baby food, or $350,000 for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Lawmakers from both parties who approved the $388 billion package last weekend set aside plenty of money for projects certain to sow good will in their home districts.

The time-honored practice flourished despite the ballooning deficit, less money for federal programs and rising unease about how government will finance the futures of Medicare and Social Security.

For instance, there was $50,000 to control Missouri’s wild-hog problem, $1 million for the Norwegian American Foundation in Seattle, $335,000 to protect North Dakota’s sunflowers from blackbirds, $4 million for the International Fertilizer Development Center in Alabama.

There’s little mystery about why such spending survives in good times or bad.

“They do it because they can get away with it; they do it because it’s the thing that allows them to do a good press release back home and be able to say to folks, ‘I’m delivering something for you,”‘ said Frank Clemente, a spokesman for the private watchdog group Public Citizen.

The pork spending was so prolific that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had no problem filling a half-hour floor speech with examples before the Senate vote on the measure, such as a plan for $1 million for the Wild American Shrimp Initiative.

“I am hoping that the appropriators could explain to me why we need $1 million for this — are American shrimp unruly and lacking initiative? Why does the U.S. taxpayer need to fund this ‘no shrimp left behind’ act?” McCain asked his colleagues.

McCain’s query went unanswered in part because spending documents don’t identify who proposed each item or why.