More than a dozen senators reiterated their biannual call to end the practice of changing clocks for Daylight Saving Time as most Americans lost an hour of sleep on Sunday.
“We’re ‘springing forward’ but should have never ‘fallen back.’ My Sunshine Protection Act would end this stupid practice of changing our clocks back and forth,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said last week.
GOP Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, a co-sponsor of the Sunshine Protection Act, said that he hopes the conversation can continue for the bill to “actually pass Congress.”
While the measure passed with unanimous consent in the Senate in March 2022, it went nowhere in the House. Last year, Rubio reintroduced it as the Sunshine Protection Act of 2023.
“My issue is, lock the clock. Let’s not have the back-and-forth on this. This has come up so many times with folks that are moms, that their little kids don’t make that shift. Whether you’re in agriculture, it’s hard to be able to make that shift,” Lankford said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“We want to be able to lock this clock. A lot of people are annoyed by it. It’s a relic of World War I, actually, when we were trying to save lamp oil. Let’s actually flick our lights on, and we can do this. In Arizona, they have done this for years, and, somehow, their kids are still getting to school on time, commerce is still happening,” he said.
“And today, in Arizona, they’re not — they’re not waking up with a clock that’s messed up,” Lankford added, referring to how the state follows standard time for the entire year. Hawaii does as well.
Daylight saving became an official practice in 1918 under the Standard Time Act. It was briefly scrapped as a national standard at the end of World War II but was revived near the start of World War II.
The idea is to ensure that there’s more daylight in the evening. Benjamin Franklin is widely credited with having come up with the idea.
Briefly, during WWII, Congress made daylight saving time a year-round phenomenon, in a bit to help conserve fuel. That took place from 1942 to 1945.
Other senators backing Rubio’s and Scott’s renewed push include Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.), Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM). (New York Post)
According to polling, a majority of Americans, 62 percent, support ending the practice of changing the time in the fall and spring.