WASHINGTON — Senators caught most of America by surprise on Tuesday when they unanimously passed a bill that would make daylight saving time permanent nationwide.
The Sunshine Protection Act, which was just introduced last week, still needs to pass the House and then would need President Joe Biden’s signature to become law. But its unanimous passage in the Senate indicates wide support for never having to turn the nation’s clocks back again and giving Americans another hour of afternoon sunlight in the winter.
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, the lead sponsor of the bill, has long pushed to make daylight saving time permanent, but this is the first time his legislation has passed the Senate. In a video last week before the US sprung forward, Rubio said, “Switching in and out of Daylight Saving Time is outdated, and it’s only a source of annoyance and confusion. Frankly, it’s just dumb, and there’s just no other way to say it.”
Twenty states, including Florida, have taken steps to stick with daylight saving time year-round, but Congress needs to pass this law for those to take effect, Rubio said. The bill will allow states to pass their own laws to continue changing their clocks twice per year if they want to stick with the current norm in most of the county; Arizona and Hawaii don’t observe daylight saving time at all.
“No more dark afternoons in the winter. No more losing an hour of sleep every spring. We want more sunshine during our most productive waking hours,” Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, another sponsor of the bill, said in a statement. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Americans want more sunshine and less depression.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Biden supports the bill or would sign it if it comes to his desk.
The US first adopted daylight saving time in 1918. The idea was to add extra sunlight hours in the summer to conserve energy needed to light homes and businesses, though some studies suggest that we’re not actually saving energy, according to National Geographic.
America tried making daylight saving time permanent once before — and then quickly abandoned it. The Nixon administration extended daylight saving hours to the winter in January of 1974. At the time, a majority of Americans supported the move. But as the winter wore on, the benefit of lighter evenings was undercut by darker mornings. Support dropped and the experiment was not renewed the following winter.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, the lead Democratic sponsor of the bill, addressed some of that criticism in a speech on the Senate floor, saying that he understood that morning …….
Source: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/sarahmimms/daylight-saving-time-permanent-congress
