The census taken every 10 years by the U.S. government is much more than just an exercise in counting heads. It is responsible for either spending or distributing billions of dollars throughout the country and into the economy, something a recession-wracked nation sorely needs. An assessment by the Government Accountability Office determined census data was used at least partly by federal offices that ran assistance programs for everything from welfare to highway construction that spent $478.3 billion in 2009.