Daylight Saving Time Would Be Permanent with Senate Bill | PEOPLE.com
By: Greta Bjornson (PEOPLE. com)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The Senate on Tuesday approved a bill that, if signed into law, would make daylight saving time permanent starting in 2023.
The measure, officially titled the Sunshine Protection Act, passed unanimously, according to CNN and Reuters. It must next pass through the House of Representatives, after which it would go to President Joe Biden, who would have to sign the bill.
The White House hasn't commented on the legislation; the version of it in the House is being reviewed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a spokesperson told Reuters.
If the measure is cleared by Congress and made into law, Americans would no longer turn the clocks back every November.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican who is one of the bill's sponsors, said, "I know this is not the most important issue confronting America, but it's one of those issues where there's a lot of agreement," per Reuters. "If we can get this passed, we don't have to do this stupidity anymore."
He added, "Pardon the pun, but this is an idea whose time has come."
Rubio also said the proposal would not be enacted until November 2023 to allow airlines and trains to adjust their schedules, according to Politico, which noted that the House could change the bill's implementation date.
The U.S. first tried out daylight saving time in 1918, and the practice has been in place since the 1960s, according to Reuters. But not all states in the U.S. observe daylight saving time; both Arizona and Hawaii would be on standard time if the bill was signed into law.
American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands do not observe daylight saving time either. The bill would keep them on standard time, as well.
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Good. Something not needed is changing the time. Keep it the way it is now. No more falling back.
Well, I, for one, will miss it. I like the sudden change twice a year.
If HI and AZ are fine without it, why all the fuss about this?
I always liked getting home in the evening and there was still some daylight left.
I hated getting home and it was dark by 5:30.
These people in Congress should find something better to do. It is not a big deal to change the clocks twice a year.
It is a simple thing that can pass and be done with.
Why should I have to change my clocks twice a year?
most of my clocks are wrong 6 months out of the year. my smartphone knows what time it is...
I'm not a fucking solar panel, it's either daylight or it isn't.
The clock in my car is finally right.
Bad thing is I am use to looking at it and subtracting an hour...
My car is actually easier to reset than my new stove
I can't figure it out, yet, and I'm too lazy to open the owner's manual. besides, it'll be the right time in another 6 months.
I got this fancy new stove that has a built in air fryer and it has convection baking and roasting. So all this fancy stuff but you have to set the time at the top of the hour because the manual doesn't tell you how to set the minutes.
As I get older it get's more difficult to adjust my clock. I'm tired and grumpy for a week or more and I don't need it. It's not necessary and this should have been done away with years ago.
Being on DST all year round will mean it will be dark when millions of children go to school in the winter. A lot of parents are not going to like that.
I dont buy that changing clocks twice a year and losing or gaining an hour sleep is a major burden on people.
We have things called lights now. Hahahaha! j/k
According to statistics there is a rise in heart attacks and strokes following that hour of sleep loss each spring. There is also an uptick in depression in the fall. If changing to permanent DST doesn't work out well there's no reason it can't be changed back in the future.
Morning Evil. I am with you...
My pet hate is getting up in the dark when I was working...now I am retired I don't get up until it is daylight... luxury...
Other than if the cat decides to start bellowing for food, wants out, play time, scratch behind the ear..but even starting to wonder about that.
Open the door so it can go out, flip the kettle on and I go back to bed. By that time the cat is back on the bed curled up and do not disturb....things are going to change around here very quickly...
Oh they are, are they?
says your cat
For me it is a pain because the cats don't adjust and JUMP on my head an hour earlier.
oh the irony in that statement, imagine,
human beings deciding what becomes permanent or temporary.
/s
Did Eddie Munster aka Senator Rubio birth this sane idea? If so, pinch me to see if I am awake!
It may have something to do with the way the shadow at sunrise and sunset are cast on that giant forehead of his. I often wonder if he does forehead curls in the gym.
Well, he was a 'co' author...
Mark this down, it could be his only worthwhile accomplishment.
The reasoning behind DST was so that farm children could get their morning chores done and not have to leave for school while it was still dark outside during winter months and so farm workers could work longer into evenings in summer during the growing season. Both were primarily concerns of rural Americans...
AOC just said if we made Daylight savings permanent, we could generate more solar power.
And, Lauren Bobart cannot even tell time...
Mrs Bobert, can you recite the alphabet?
A..K.. Wait...
She says enough silly things you don't have to make things up
True enough.
Not really, the time is the same for country or city folk. It will be dark at 7:30 am or so and a lot of kids are going to school at that time.
Morning John...Geez what time does school start over there??..
Here it is 9am so regardless the kids are always going to and from school in daylight in towns and cities...
Might be a few exceptions for rural kids who some have to travel up to 1.5 hours to get to school in my State.
There is a Catholic grammar school a block away from my house. During the school year there are kids walking past here at 7:30-7:45 every day. They are in school from 8 to 2:30.
Times vary from school district to school district .
Country kids had farther to travel on bad roads.
Farm kids had animals to care for before class.
Look it up...
Its immaterial who had to do what - if it stays dark until 7 or 7:30 am you are going to have kids going to school in the dark.
I'm telling you the original reasons given.
It doesn't matter what you think about it...
Why do we have to wait until 2023 to make this permanent? That means 2 more time changes
I hope the house takes it up and passes it.
Do it Pelosi!
It's in committee. I'm hoping it wraps that up quickly and gets it to a floor vote before the end of the month.
me, too
I'm thinking things like letting coders get it into updates for devices that now auto adjust the time.
Good point!
Brilliant.
Morning. Hate daylight saving always have. Here they let it run for six months. Already it is dark now at 7am so have to turn the lights on of a morning. If they left it at three months for just summer it is not so bad. It's another three weeks yet before the clocks go back.
Besides half the country has it and the other half doesn't... Western Australia is now three hours behind the rest of the country, Queensland doesn't have it and the rest of the States and territories do..we can't even make up our mind on that.
I'm all for ending the changing of the clocks, but why make it daylight saving time all the time? Why not standard time all the time? Isn't it a little weird to have it be 1 o'clock when the sun is at its highest point? It's not rational. Noon is when the sun is at its highest. It's midday. Making it some other time makes no sense.
If society wants more daylight at the end of the day, why can't everybody just wake up earlier and get off work earlier?
People who do outdoor activities after work in the summer would not like it getting dark at 8:00. Cant do that one. There are Little League teams still playing at that time of day, and many dont have lights.
I understand why people want daylight. What I’m saying is if you want daylight for your activities, do them earlier in the day. Go to work at 8 instead of 9. Let offices close at 4 instead of 5. The times that we schedule things are arbitrary, but the time itself is based on the position of the sun in the sky. Daylight Saving Time literally redefines what the word “noon” means.
What makes the current system annoying is not the amount of light on a given day, but rather the unnecessary changing of clocks twice a year, with the worst part of it being the loss of an hour in the Spring.
I cant believe that people actually bitch about having to change their clocks twice a year (that is less than 1/2 of 1% of the 365 days). And anyway, most clocks today are digital and change themselves.
I dont consider the "tedium" of having to adjust clocks twice a year to even be a reasonable objection, let alone a good one.
The best time for fishing is early in the morning, so why does it have to be dark then? Where I live the time does not change, and it is the same throughout the whole country. Simple, no mistakes are made. The only clock that concerns me is the Doomsday Clock.
Actually, I have several clocks in appliances (ovens, coffee maker, etc) that don’t change themselves; the clocks in my cars don’t change themselves; and I have clocks mounted to walls that have hands and don’t change themselves. Additionally, I hate losing the hour of sleep because I actually get up on Sunday mornings, and it takes a few days to adjust. It’s a pain in the ass.
But it’s not just about adjusting clocks. A number of people who work at 2am don’t get paid for the extra hour when the time change happens. Robbing people of the sleep can lead to poorly rested people operating dangerous equipment or making poor decisions that impact other people. In short, the downside of the time change can be pretty serious, without any kind of similar upside.
I find that hard to believe. Most people go to sleep at different times on different days and dont sleep the exact same number of hours every day.
I could accept Daylight savings time 365 days a year. But the "experts" dont want that. They want only standard time. That would make it dark at 8pm (or sooner depending on the month) during the summer and early fall. That is not fair to people who want to extend outdoor activities during the warm weather.
Believe it. It can take days to adjust, and the process of adjustment can ultimately be fatal for some.
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I prefer daylight savings. I like more light in winter. But at the end of the day (no pun intended) the days get shorter in winter no matter what the clock says. I hate that.
I like this. Light in evening is better
I feel the same. I hate getting home and the day is over. No time to do anything.
I've told this to many people, but not on here I believe. Put the clock where you want it, the cows don't care.
www.washingtonpost.com /wellness/2022/03/16/daylight-saving-bill-health-effects/
Sleep experts say Senate has it wrong: Standard time, not daylight saving, should be permanent
Allyson Chiu 6-8 minutes 3/16/2022
Sleep experts widely agree with the Senate that the country should abandon its twice-yearly seasonal time changes . But they disagree on one key point: which time system should be permanent. Unlike the Senate, many sleep experts believe the country should adopt year-round standard time.
After the Senate voted unanimously and with little discussion Tuesday to make daylight saving time permanent, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine issued a statement cautioning that the move overlooks potential health risks associated with that time system. (The legislation, which would take effect next year, must get through the House and be signed by President Biden to become law.)
“We do applaud stopping the switching during the course of the year and settling on a permanent time,” said Jocelyn Cheng, a member of the AASM’s public safety committee. But, she added, “standard time, for so many scientific and circadian rationales and public health safety reasons, should really be what the permanent time is set to.”
The AASM made this stance clear in 2020 when it released a position statement recommending that the country institute year-round standard time. Its reasoning, in part, is that standard time is more closely associated with humans’ intrinsic circadian rhythm, and that disrupting that rhythm, as happens with daylight saving time, has been associated with increased risks of obesity, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease and depression.
Although some experts have called for more research before deciding on a permanent time while others questioned the push for year-round standard time, the AASM statement received backing from more than a dozen other organizations, including the National Safety Council and the National Parent Teacher Association.
“The Senate has finally delivered on something Americans all over the country want: to never have to change their clocks again,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who spoke on the Senate floor after the vote . Murray co-authored the bipartisan legislation with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), among others.
“No more dark afternoons in the winter,” Murray said. “No more losing an hour of sleep every spring. We want more sunshine during our most productive waking hours.”
But many sleep experts say that those in favor of more light in the late afternoons and evenings may not be considering the costs.
“We have all enjoyed those summer evenings with seemingly endless dusks,” said David Neubauer, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University. But daylight saving time “does not ‘save’ evening light at all, it simply steals it from the morning when it is necessary to maintain our healthy biological rhythms.”
Although the AASM noted that chronic effects of permanent daylight saving time have not been well studied, it highlighted some research that found “the body clock does not adjust to DST even after several months,” which could result in a permanent discrepancy between the environmental clock and the body clock.
“The circadian clock, it’s not just something that involves the cells of your brain,” Cheng said. “The circadian clock also regulates rhythms in other areas of the body — like cells of the heart, like cells of the liver — and by altering our natural circadian rhythm in this way, we’re throwing off that biological rhythm, and that’s a longer term effect.”
While no time system will be perfect for everyone, making daylight saving time permanent would lead to a greater number of dark mornings than we have now, said Phyllis Zee, chief of sleep medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
“With daylight saving time, we are perpetually out of synchronization with our internal clocks and we often achieve less nighttime sleep, both circumstances having negative health impacts,” Neubauer said. “Extra evening light suppresses the melatonin that should be preparing us for falling asleep. The later dawn during daylight saving time deprives our biological clocks of the critical light signal.”
Experts say circadian misalignment has been associated with adverse effects on cognition and mood as well as cardiovascular and metabolic function. “It’s really not a good thing to have your internal body clocks out of sync,” Zee said. “Imagine being in jet lag a lot of the time; it can’t be good for you.”
The current enthusiasm for permanent daylight saving time is “grossly misguided,” said Neubauer, who predicted a return to “the extremely unpopular 1970s dark winter mornings with commuters going to work and children going to school long before sunrise, inevitably leading to injuries and fatalities.”
Zee said her “heart sank” when she saw the news of the Senate vote. “I thought there would be more of a discussion, that it wouldn’t be as unanimous.” Of the three potential time systems for the country to be on — permanent standard, biannual switching and permanent daylight saving time — she said, the last is “probably the worst choice.”
The AASM noted in its statement Tuesday that the pros and cons of daylight saving time and standard time were discussed in detail during a hearing held by a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on March 9. “Unfortunately, [Tuesday’s] quick action by the Senate allowed for neither a robust discussion nor a debate,” the statement said. “We call on the House to take more time to assess the potential ramifications of establishing permanent daylight saving time before making such an important decision that will affect all Americans.”
“Everybody advocates a permanent time, but this difference between one hour back or one hour forward is not so clear in everybody’s mind,” Cheng said. “I would like to see further debate and some due diligence done on these health consequences and public safety measures before anything else goes forward.”
I find all this silly. They want to create a situation where it gets dark at 8 pm during the summer. This would greatly cut down on evening outdoor activity in the summer time. There are people who golf until it gets dark, for example, because they go after work. darkness at 8 pm in the warm weather would greatly effect that. Many other things as well.
If an hour is “greatly,” sure.
Golf earlier. Stop work earlier.
And before you say people don’t have control over that, workers have negotiated and gone on strike for all sorts of things. If they want to have more sun time in the summer, I’ll bet they can find a way to do that.
Ridiculous. You want people to go on strike for earlier working hours in the summer?
Let them pass an all standard time set up and let them prepare for the absolute deluge of complaints they are going to get.
Of course an hour less daylight on summer evenings is "greatly" . There are only three to begin with.
So, you think it’s ridiculous for workers to organize and demand the work day end a little earlier, but you don’t think it’s ridiculous for an act of Congress to change the clocks away from their logical alignment with the path of the sun?
It also causes kids to have to wake and then walk to school in the dark during winter time. The evening sun and morning dark also makes it harder in general to get proper, healthy sleep.
You're Not Wrong: A Neurologist Explains Why Daylight Saving Time Isn't Healthy
I agree 100%.
I think they should go with Standard Time as well.
Personally I don't give a shit if it's standard OR daylight time - I just want to stop the constant changing back and forth.
I hate the day they change the clocks back and it gets dark even earlier and when we move them up and have longer evenings is one day I look forward to