Time For A Change? U.S. Senate Agrees To Make Daylight Saving Time ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Senate on Tuesday unanimously agreed to make daylight saving time permanent in 2023, ending a yearly ritual that requires people to set their clocks ahead by an hour in March and set them back in November.

“This is an idea whose time has come,” the legislation’s sponsor, Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, said on the U.S. Senate floor.

Rubio said the biannual ritual that started as an energy saving measure in 1918 has become disruptive, and most people would like to “stop the back and forth changing.” He said there’s an increase in heart attacks, car accidents and pedestrian accidents in the weeks that follow the clock changes, and having more evening light facilitates after-school youth sporting events and will lengthen the time that kids can play outside.

He expressed hope the bill would pass the U.S. House of Representatives and that President Joe Biden would sign it. If his bill were to become law, daylight saving time would not become permanent until November 2023 because airlines and other industries have already built out their schedules based on the existing timetables.

The measure passed without U.S. Senators having to take a recorded vote.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing on the legislation last week, where Bowling Green Republican Rep. Bob Latta said his constituents are more concerned about rising gas prices, the invasion of Ukraine and inflation than they are about daylight saving time.

“I haven’t had a constituent write to my office since October, 2020 about daylight saving time,” declared Latta.

He said that having less morning daylight would result in kids going to school in the dark, and raise safety concerns for morning runners, walkers and bike riders.

The Democratic chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, New Jersey’s Frank Pallone, said at the hearing that he’d like to stop changing the clocks, but hasn’t decided whether standard or daylight saving time should be made permanent.

“I believe that any justification for springing forward and falling back are either outdated or outweighed by the serious health, and economic impacts we now know are associated with the time changes,” said Pallone.

The Ohio Senate last month voted 31-1 to adopt a non-binding resolution urging Congress to make daylight saving time permanent nationwide.

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