NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Today's the day for forking over your taxes to the U.S. government, if you haven't already.

As you write the check, you may want to consider what the money gets spent on: roads, schools and emergency services, for the most part.

Those are deemed good and necessary expenditures by most people. Other things are more debatable.

For those you can turn to the latest compilation of the Congressional Pig Book, published earlier this month by the non-profit, non-partisan organization Citizens Against Government Waste.

A sampling:

-- $50 million for an indoor rain forest underway in Coralville, Iowa. The large-scale construction job will include a tropical rain forest, a 1 million gallon aquarium and a recreated prairie. (Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), who pushed the project, could not be reached for comment. He has defended it in the past on the grounds it will create jobs and boost economic development.)

-- $2 million for a juvenile justice program called "First Tee" in St. Augustine, Fla. that uses golf to help prevent crime.

-- $2.25 million spent on several Shakespeare-related projects.

-- $200,000 for a program called "Rockin' the Schools" presented by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland. This was allocated funds without a budget request and was added to the roster in conference committee.

-- $270,000 for potato storage research at the Agriculture Research Service Laboratory in Madison, Wisc., another allocation passed without a formal budget request. However, a press secretary from Senator Herb Kohl's office (D-WI, Agricultural Appropriations Subcommittee) said the poorly worded appropriation will help growers find ways to reduce pesticide use and determine the best management practices for pesticide reduction and was requested by the University of Wisconsin.

This year, CAGW chronicled a record $22.9 billion in what it called wasteful expenditures for fiscal 2004, up 1.6 percent from $22.5 billion last year.

In this election year as members of Congress stump in their districts bemoaning the nation's deficit and fiscal woes, CAGW said that appropriators stuck 10,656 projects into 13 appropriations bills, up 13 percent over last year's 9,362 wasteful, frivolous items.

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"As Americans prepare their taxes, they should look at both parties in Congress with scorn," CAGW President Thomas A. Schatz said at a news conference. "The money in the U.S. Treasury belongs to all Americans, not elected officials who want to use it to pay for parochial projects in an effort to bolster their reelection campaigns. In this time of war, too many elected officials are more interested in protecting their incumbency than in protecting the physical and financial security of the American people."

"There are three parties in Washington: the Republicans, the Democrats and the appropriators. This is an entrenched class of congressmen who have long sat on appropriations committees and who view bringing home pork as their primary objective," said Jonathan Collegio, communications director with the organization Americans for Tax Reform. He suggests term limits for appropriations committees as a possible solution.

"The problem is institutional," he added.

Some Congressmen take issue with the CAGW's targeting of appropriations, including the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Ted Stevens (R-Alaska).

Senator Stevens' state was singled out for most pork per capita ($808) and for the more than $2.2 million given to the town of North Pole, Alaska, population 1,570.

"The book unfairly targets Alaska because they choose to not understand the unique structure of the state," said Courtney Schikora, press secretary for the senator.

"North Pole is on the edge of the Fairbanks metropolitan area. The city line is small, but it is surrounded by a large area of communities who rely on its resources," Schikora said, in response to the high profile criticism of the town. She added that North Pole serves the Eielson Air Force Base, an oil refinery and several rural towns that have no community facilities. "For all those people traveling in snow and six months of darkness, the town has about a square mile of road lighting."