The 2011 spending bill signed by President Obama includes $3.8 billion for NASA’ s Constellation Program, the rocket being designed to send astronauts to the moon.

The president had proposed scrapping the program and encouraging private spacecraft development, but Congress overruled him. Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-MD, defended Constellation, saying NASA “is about innovation and it is about jobs.”

State and local spending on GSA Schedule 70 increased by 7.5% last year, to $610 million, according to the market research firm Input. The report says growth in GSA Schedule purchases was twice as fast as overall state and local spending on IT.

Input expects even faster growth of 12% compounded annually over the next five years, bringing state and local spending over $1 billon by 2015.

The Health and Human Services Department has notified a drug-company CEO that it intends to exclude him from doing business with the government because of his company’s improper marketing of its products. The Wall Street Journal reported that the move is part of an Obama administration effort to hold corporate chief executives accountable for a company’s misconduct, even if they were unaware of the violations.

HHS moved against Howard Solomon, CEO of Forest Laboratories Inc. since 1977. If he is barred from federal contracting, the company could not sell to Medicare, Medicaid or VA health services. Forest would have to oust its CEO or lose government business.

“It would be a mistake to see this as solely a health-care industry issue,” Richard Westling, a corporate defense attorney in Nashville, told the Journal. “The use of sanctions such as exclusion and debarment to punish individuals where the government is unable to prove a direct legal or regulatory violation could have wide-ranging impact.”

The Defense Information Systems Agency formally opened its new headquarters at Fort Meade, MD, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony April 15. DISA’s more than 6,000 employees are being transferred from five sites in Northern Virginia as part of the Base Realignment and Closing process.

The 1 million-square-foot building, on a 95-acre campus, cost $420 million. Maryland political leaders have complained about the added traffic congestion around Fort Meade. Bisnow on Business Inc. reports that the agency’s chaplain got stuck in traffic and arrived late, missing the invocation.

DISA commander Lt. Gen. Carroll Pollett said several telework locations have been opened, including two classified ones in undisclosed locations.

The Department of Transportation is expanding its Small Business Bonding Education Program to 11 new cities. The program, a partnership with Surety and Fidelity Association of America, is designed to help more businesses become bond-ready and better able to compete.

Participating companies attend a 10-week educational workshop designed to help small businesses improve their operations in order to become bonded or to increase their bonding capacity. Then they hold one-on-one meetings with Surety and Fidelity representatives to assemble materials necessary to complete the bond application process.

After pilots in three cities, the program will expand this year to Baltimore Raleigh, NC; Miami/Orlando, FL; Denver; New Orleans; Los Angeles; Chicago; New York; Seattle; Columbia, SC; and Minneapolis.