(FORTUNE Magazine) – Since Sept. 11, a lot has been written about profiteers dressed as patriots. Lobbyists have won all sorts of giveaways, from bison-meat purchases to the abolition of the alternative minimum tax for corporations. But some of the most remarkable examples haven't been adequately exposed.

For instance, people who fly crop dusters--the very planes that bin Laden's boys considered buying--are on their way to receiving a tax break. The Senate Finance Committee's stimulus legislation exempts owners of the nation's roughly 1,900 crop dusters (called "aerial applicators") from $5 million in fuel taxes. Although lobbyists have been pushing the proposal since this summer, Andrew Moore, of the National Agricultural Aviation Association, now says, "We think it's a stimulus provision."

Of course he does. Every industry and interest group is pitching its favorite subsidy as way to spark economic recovery. The high-tech community was full of virtual anarchists until profits started to sink; now they are begging for a $540 million tax credit to subsidize broadband technologies. Get this: They're pushing the credit--which former Senator Patrick Moynihan devised a year and a half ago--as a new-fangled stimulus. "We were looking for different ways to give it legs," acknowledges Grant Seiffert of the Telecommunications Industry Association.

The financial services industry is also repackaging an old pitch as an urgent stimulus. Since 1987, insurance, banking, and securities firms have wanted to make permanent a benefit that allows them to delay paying taxes on foreign income until those profits are brought back to the U.S. A Treasury official told a group of lobbyists recently that the ten-year, $21 billion provision would have "zero stimulative effect." But the item still found its way into the House-passed bill.

Such "patriotism" seems contagious. The National Limousine Association is trying to arrange an exemption from the gas-guzzler tax for its fleets. The American Concrete Pavement Association advocates a high level of spending on highway construction. And the National Association of Realtors wants to speed up tax write-offs for improvements to office space, even though real estate has been one of the few bright spots in this economy. Other petitioners include the American Shipbuilding Association, the American Textile Manufacturers Institute, and the Equipment Leasing Association of America.

Then there are a few lawmakers who are attaching riders to post-Sept. 11 packages without even pretending that they will improve the overall economy. Democratic Senator Bob Graham of Florida inserted into the Finance Committee bill special tax treatment for owners of groves blighted by citrus canker, a disease that has forced the destruction of two million trees in his state since 1995. An aide says Graham decided to attach his $3 million amendment when Finance Chairman Max Baucus, from agricultural Montana, chose (for no discernible economic reason) to add $6 billion of aid to farmers to his bill.

The opportunism is so blatant that even some lobbyists are upset. "It gets disconcerting to read about bison meat and the like," grumbles Jerry Howard, CEO of the National Association of Home Builders. Howard's group hadn't asked Congress for favors immediately after the attacks in New York and D.C. But now, he says, "we will be more aggressive. We have an obligation to our members to roll up our sleeves and go at it." Jerry, join the crowd.