2010 Census (drum roll....) 1.6 Billion UNDER budget!

Do you remember the ShAARP session blog post on the Census back in March? Did you fill out your 2010 Census and send it back? Then you can count yourself among the 72% of Americans who returned their questionnaire by mail, which was a higher rate of participation than originally expected.
Secretary Gary Locke of the Commerce Department announced today: a "$1.6 Billion in 2010 Census Savings due to - an effective public outreach campaign and careful management save taxpayer dollars" according to commerce.gov
Get this: "In the first full year of Census management by Obama administration officials and in a time of tightened federal resources, the Census came in 22% under budget. The savings occurred primarily because contingency funding set aside for disasters or major operational failures was not tapped and because the Census questionnaire mail-back response rate and workforce productivity across field operations both beat expectations" !!! wow that's great people.