While the Dem takeover of Congress will have many bad effects, Jeff Foust points out that there's at least one silver lining for space enthusiasts:

...there appears to be a chance to make a serious attempt at some form of export control reform. The change in control of Congress after the 2006 elections has put new people into leadership positions of key committees, including some representatives who may be more amenable to reform. However, getting that reform passed through Congress is no easy task, and is fraught with political peril for those who do support it. The odds of getting meaningful reform passed during this Congress may be higher now than they have been for years, but that doesn’t mean the process will be straightforward or assured of success.

It also demonstrates the power of unintended consequences:

“I feel some sense of responsibility for what happened,” said David Garner, a retired Air Force colonel. Garner had helped put together the 1998 legislation that was designed to add commercial communications satellites—like those that had been implicated in the transfer of sensitive technology to the Chinese by a House committee led by then-Rep. Christopher Cox—to the Munitions List, meaning that their export would be overseen by the State Department rather than the more permissive Commerce Department. That was, Garner said, exactly what he thought the legislation did.

Shortly after the bill became law, he recounted a meeting where he and other officials discussed the legislation. At that time, he said, “we all had a pretty good sense of what we were going to do, and then the legal office of political affairs at State said, ‘Well, you know, all the parts and components on those comsats are captured, too.’ We all sort of looked at each other said, ‘I didn’t write that. Did you write that?’ None of us around the table believed that that’s what we had done, but in fact that’s what ended up.”

Even if the chances are still low, higher is better than they have been, and given that Duncan Hunter is now in the minority, and busy running for president, there may be a chance of fixing this. If such a commission is formed to reform it, we need to get some representatives of New Space on it.