The U.S. Senate passed a bill on Tuesday that would make Daylight Saving Time permanent.
U.S. Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, both Republicans from Florida, have been pushing for several years to make DST permanent and urged the House of Representatives to take up and pass the Sunshine Protection Act of 2021 and for President Joe Biden to sign the bill into law.
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“Just this past weekend, we all went through that biannual ritual of changing the clock back and forth, and the disruption that comes with it. And one has to ask themselves after a while, ‘Why do we keep doing it? Why are we doing this?’” Rubio asked on the Senate floor.
While he was Florida Governor in 2018, Scott signed legislation which would exempt Florida from the time change practice and allow the state to remain on Daylight Saving Time year round.
For Florida’s change to apply, however, a change in the federal statute is required, according to a news release from Rubio’s office. Nineteen other states — Alabama, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming — have passed similar laws, resolutions, or voter initiatives, and dozens more are looking to do so.
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Scott said passage of the bill into law would increase physical fitness, a sentiment that Rubio echoed on the Senate floor.
“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 5 p.m. — in some cases as early as 4 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].”
If signed into law, the Sunshine Protection Act would apply to states that currently participate in DST, which most states observe for eight months out of the year. However, the change would not take effect until November 2023. Rubio said that’s to accommodate public transportation, which has already built out its schedules around states that observe Daylight Saving Time.
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“I want to lay out one caveat: this bill and the amendment does delay its implementation,” Rubio said. “The reason why, and I asked — believe me, I asked, ‘Why are we delaying this?’ I think it’s important we’re delaying it until November of 2023 because of airlines, the rails, and transportation methods. Others have already built out schedules based on the existing schedule on the existing timeline of this. They’ve asked for a few months here … to make that adjustment.”
States and territories that currently remain on Standard Time year-round would continue to do so, the release said. Many studies have shown that making DST permanent could benefit the economy and the country. You can click here to read a one-page summary of the bill.
“The good news is that we can get this passed. We don’t have to keep doing this stupidity anymore. Why we would enshrine this in our laws and keep it for so long is beyond me,” Rubio said.
Watch Rubio’s remarks following the passage of the Sunshine Protection Act below:
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