IDG News Service — Republicans are poised to take majority control of the U.S. House of Representatives after Tuesday's election, but it will be business as usual for many technology policy issues in Congress.

Most polls and political pundits expect a split Congress, with Democrats hanging on to a slim majority in the Senate. A change in majority party in the House may not mean a major reverse in tech policy, however, because IT-related issues coming before Congress in recent years have largely avoided partisan squabbles, except for network neutrality and privacy debates.

Congress has also avoided action on many tech issues during the past two years, with lawmakers focused on health care, the economy and other issues. Republicans and Democrats have worked together on cybersecurity, copyright and spectrum issues, even though few tech bills have passed.

Even with little recent action on cybersecurity, there's widespread interest in Congress. "There's some agreement out there that something needs to be done," said Liz Hyman, vice president of public advocacy at the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), an IT trade group and certification provider.

A major exception to the bipartisan nature of tech issues in Congress has been an ongoing debate over net neutrality, with many Democrats supporting new rules prohibiting broadband providers from selectively blocking Web traffic, and many Republicans opposing new rules.

Then again, a change related to net neutrality would be more in approach than in substance. Democrats have been in control of both chambers of Congress, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, and the White House for the past two years, and neither Congress nor the FCC has come close to creating new rules.

Current House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, put out a compromise net neutrality proposal in September, just before Congress recessed for campaign season. The proposal fell through when Joe Barton of Texas, the senior Republican on the committee, said he could not support it without longer deliberations.

Little will change for net neutrality under a Republican-controlled House, said Art Brodsky, communications director for Public Knowledge, a digital rights group in support of strong net neutrality rules. "Nothing happened before," he said. "It's hard to get diminished from zero."

Still, some people worry that a Republican House could kill any chances of stronger net neutrality rules passing in Congress or at the FCC.

"As the owner of many small domains that don't have a lot of capital to purchase bandwidth, I might not be in business if not for net neutrality," said author and marketing consultant Shel Horowitz.

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