Super Bowl Ads - Census is Way Over Budget & They Just Started Counting

The U.S. Census is well into conducting its constitutionally mandated 2010 count but the exercise is already running over budget.

Taxpayers are footing the bill of $14.7 billion for 10 years of Census counting. That price tag supports 500 local offices and a peak staff of 1.4 million workers.

But some cost overruns have already plagued this Census, like when tens of thousands of workers fanned out between March and July of last year to verify addresses -- a process known as "address canvassing." The Census Bureau, federal auditors later found, ran 25 percent over budget for a total cost of $444 million.

"When I arrived in July, the findings of that overrun were just emerging," Census Director Robert Groves said. "There was an underestimation of just the workload -- how many houses we had to go to." - Politico Story