Lawmakers Push to Make Daylight Saving Time Permanent: Changing the Clock Is ‘Outdated’

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Hannah Knudsen

Lawmakers are pushing to make Daylight Saving Time (DST) permanent across the United States, deeming the routine clock change “outdated” and “unnecessary.”

The Senate on Tuesday passed a bill, pushed by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), that would do so. Specifically, the Sunshine Protection Act would make DST the “new, permanent standard time.” However, the bill’s summary adds that “states with areas exempt from daylight saving time may choose the standard time for those areas.”

“So we’re doing this back-and-forth clock changing for about 16 weeks of Standard Time a year. I think the majority of the American people’s preference is just to stop the back and forth changing,” Rubio said Tuesday.

“But beyond that, I think their preference is — certainly at least based on today’s vote, and what we’ve heard — is to make Daylight Saving Time permanent,” he continued, citing the “harm that clock switching has”:

We see an increase in heart attacks and car accidents and pedestrian accidents in the week[s] that follow the changes.

The benefits of Daylight Saving Time have also been accounted for in the research. For example, reduced crime as there’s light later in the day. We’ve seen decreases in child obesity. A decrease in seasonal depression that many feel during Standard Time.

And then the practical one, one that I’ve witnessed with my own eyes…. We’re a country [in which] we desperately want our kids to be outside, to be playing, to be doing sports, not just to be sitting in front of a TV or a computer terminal or playing video games all day. And it gets really tough, in many parts of the country, to be able to do that. Because what ends up happening is, especially for these 16 weeks a year, if you don’t have a park or an outdoor facility with lights, you’re basically shut down around five p.m. — in some cases as early as four or 4:30 p.m. And these lights in parks and things like that are expensive, and then a lot of communities are resistant to them. It makes it tough to do [activities].

Rubio expressed hope that the House will pass the measure and president will sign it but also added one caveat: delaying the implementation of the change, if passed, to November 2023.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) also pointed to the impacts the constant changes have on mental and physical health.

“The biannual transition of ‘spring forward’ and ‘fall back’ disrupts circadian sleeping patterns, causing confusion, sleep disturbances and even an elevated risk to heart health,” he wrote in part, adding that “year-round daylight saving time could also decrease the likelihood of fatal car accidents, which jump six percent in the days following the time change, according to a 2020 study from the University of Colorado.”

Rubio’s fellow Florida Sen. Rick Scott (R) also expressed strong support for the change.

“Today is a great day for sunshine and for the Sunshine State! Changing the clock twice a year is outdated and unnecessary. We need to give families in Florida more sunshine, not less,” he said on Tuesday.

“Since I was Governor, I have been leading the charge to make Daylight Saving Time permanent. I want to thank Senator Rubio and all our colleagues for their unanimous passage of this commonsense legislation,” he added, calling on the House to “immediately vote on this good bill and send it to the president’s desk” along with others.

However, critics say permanent DST would be bad, pointing out that it would “delay sunrises past 8:45am in most states, past 8am up to 3.9 months in most states.”

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