Lazaro Aleman
Riverbend News
The U.S. House of Representatives voted recently by a large margin to make daylight saving time permanent across the country.
The measure, appropriately enough named the “Sunshine Protection Act,” passed on a 308-to-117 bipartisan vote in the House on Tuesday, July 14. If also approved in the Senate, the measure would spare Americans the semiannual practice of moving the clock an hour ahead in spring and an hour back in fall, resulting in the mnemonic “spring forward, fall back” as a reminder to adjust clocks for daylight saving time.
The idea behind daylight saving time is that in spring, the one-hour advance provides Americans with an additional hour of sunlight in the evening, if at the expense of an hour of sleep. The equation is reversed in the fall, with Americans gaining an extra hour of sleep at the cost of an hour of daylight. Many people, however, resent the annual shifts, as they disrupt their sleep and typically require a short period of adjustment.
Daylight saving time was implemented in 1918 by the Standard Time Act, which also established the four time zones across the country. At the time, the idea was that daylight saving time would help conserve fuel and power during World War I, as daytime work burned less fuel and allowed for longer work hours.
Congress has tinkered with the Act a couple of times since. First was in 1966, when the Uniform Time Act allowed states to observe daylight saving time from late spring to early fall. And more recently in 2005, the Energy Policy Act extended daylight saving time for several weeks, from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November.
Under current law, states can choose to remain on standard time permanently, and several do, including Hawaii, the greater part of Arizona, Puerto Rico and certain of American possessions, such as Guam, Samoa and the Virgin Islands. States, however, cannot currently opt for permanent daylight saving time, although 19 have passed legislation to do so, including Florida. The Sunshine State, in fact, was the first state to pass such legislation in 2018, which action other states followed. The catch, however, is that without congressional approval, this legislation cannot go into effect.
As it stands now, if the House-passed bill were to pass the Senate as well, states would be allowed to opt out of permanent daylight saving time if they so chose, provided they enacted the appropriate legislation to remain on standard time.
The likelihood of the bill passing in the Senate, however, appears questionable. National news outlets report that several senators in both political parties have expressed either outright opposition to the legislation or qualms about it.
Proponents of daylight saving time attribute economic and health benefits to it, including energy conservation, increases in retail sales and greater participation in outdoor recreational activities that improve physical and mental health.
Opponents, on the other hand, argue that standard time is more attuned to humans’ internal clocks and that daylight saving time is a relic of the past that needlessly deprives people of sleep.
This latest go-round is not Congress’s first attempt to grapple with making daylight saving time permanent. In 1974, it did away with the semiannual practice altogether, only to reverse its decision a year later because of widespread discontent. Then in 2022, the Senate unanimously approved legislation to make daylight saving time permanent, only to have the measure stalled in the House and eventually die.
The irony is not lost on some senators, who have remarked on the House’s resurrection of the measure, four years after the Senate passed its own version.
Discover more from Riverbend News
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.