Bill To Make Daylight Savings Time Permanent Stalls In Congress Again

Here’s a shocker, a bill aimed to address a longstanding issue has once again stalled in Congress. This time it’s the Sunshine Protection Act, which would give states the power to make Daylight Savings Time permanent year round.

If this Act were to somehow get through Congress and see the light of day, at some point, you might no longer have to do the annual Fall back thing. That’s the switching your clocks back an hour thing that you do every Autumn and will be doing again this Sunday, November 2, at 2 am.

Senator Rick Scott and Representative Vern Buchanan, both Republicans from Florida, which is known as the Sunshine State, have been championing this bill. It’s actually already made it past the committee stage and this past Tuesday reached the Senate floor to be be discussed. This bill would permit states that have already passed permanent daylight saving time legislation to proceed with locking their clocks. On the Senate floor, Scott along with other Senators tried to advance the bill by unanimous consent in order to fast-track it, arguing that “this bill is about states’ rights. It allows the people of each state to choose what best fits their needs and the needs of their families.” The bill has had bipartisan support and addresses something that many including Donald Trump and Elon Musk have complained about so seemed to have a decent chance getting through Congress.

But then grid meet lock. Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) refused to offer his consent to the whole unanimous consent thing. Why? He’s been a proponent of making standard time the permanent standard rather than Daylight Savings Time. So, rather springing forward with anything new, Congress may be yet again falling back on something that’s good for nobody.

Previous Attempts To Make Daylight Saving Time Permanent Have Failed

If you feel that you may have dreamt this scenario before, it’s been more than just a dream. The sun has set on the Sunshine Protection Act in similar fashion previous years. I have already detailed for Forbes about how current Secretary of State Marco Rubio had introduced the original version of the Sunshine Protection Act in 2022 when he was a Republican Senator for Florida. But that bill That bill aimed to do away with the switch from standard time to Daylight Savings Tim that happens each March and the the switchback that occurs every November. But the sun eventually set on that attempt to get the Sunshine Protection Act through Congress, leaving all of us with the unhappy medium that we have today.

Switching Between Daylight Savings Time And Standard Time Can Have Negative Health Effects

A study published on September 15 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed some of the bad health effects of this back-and-forth in Congress about going back-and-forth on the clocks each year. For that study, Lara Weed, a graduate student in bioengineering and Jamie Zeitzer, PhD, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, modeled the light exposure changes faced by people in different counties in the U.S. and the resulting potential circadian rhythm and health impacts, based on county-level data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the prevalence of arthritis, cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, coronary heart disease, depression, diabetes, obesity and stroke. They estimated that establishing some type of permanent time—either standard time or daylight savings time—throughout the year could prevent 200,000 to 300,000 cases of strokes of each year and 1.7 to 2.6 million cases of obesity.

That’s because your Circadian rhythm—that innate clock in your body—helps regulate your sleep-wake cycle and a lot of your physiologic processes. This rhythm is why you experience jet lag when you travel across numerous time zones, resulting in your having to watch some kind of TV show that you’d never watch at freaking 3 am in the hotel room because you can’t sleep. Disrupting your Circadian rhythm twice a year can in turn throw off many of your physiologic processes for a while, possibly leading to various negative health outcomes.

Your Circadian rhythm gets disrupted because the light exposure that you get, your activity and all the activity around you can all affect this cycle. Your natural circadian cycle is probably not 24 hours on the dot. On average, it is around 12 minutes longer but, of course, can vary significantly person-to-person. The timing and amount of light exposure that you get throughout the day can affect this cycle. For example, light exposure in the morning could potentially shortening it, and light exposure in the nighttime could potentially extend it.

I’ve also written in Forbes before about studies that have shown how accidents and other bad health events such as heart attacks and strokes tend to increase right after the clock changes. This shouldn’t be too surprising when the “Spring Forward” part leads to your losing an hour of sleep. But the Fall Back part can be disruptive as well, even though you may welcome the extra hour of sleep.

There Are Arguments Both Sides Of The Daylight Savings Time Debate

So, with no one advocating to stick with what we currently have, why the bleep hasn’t there been a change? Well people have been arguing over which time to stick with all year round: Daylight Savings Time or Standard Time. The arguments for each direction really fall along the lines of when do you want to do more things. Standard Time year round will shift the sunlight hours and thus a lot of activities earlier in the day whereas DST throughout the year will do the opposite and make later in the day brighter. Therefore, if you are more of a “Morning Lark,” you may favor the former. And if you are more of a “Night Owl,” you may say, “Owl go with the DST option.”

Some including the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the National Sleep Foundation and the American Medical Association have claimed that exposure to light in the early morning is better for your overall health and thus have argued for making standard time the year round standard. But you’ve got to wonder how much personal bias may be entering into any of these arguments. After all, there are plenty of morning larks in the medical profession as evidenced by the prevalence of 7 am meetings.

Plus, many of the studies to date on this whole DST versus standard time argument haven’t taken into account the whole system of complexities involved and the diversity of the population. What’s better for you really depends on a lot of different things. Say you are more of Night Owl, otherwise known as a cooler person. Forcing your schedule to be earlier could make you more miserable, which can’t be good for your health. Also, some work and social circles tend to have activities later at night. If you are in a work or social situation where a given person may be very different based on his or her innate Morning Larkness versus Night Owlishness, surroundings, health situation, social situation, job situation and other things. What if, for example, being forced to wake up earlier cuts into a Night Owl’s work and social opportunties and makes him or her more miserable in general? Would that be better for the Night Owl’s overall health?

Moreover, different parts of the world already experience significant differences in when the sun rises and sets based on how far from the equator they are. If you are going to tell people that having sunlight earlier is better for you, then should you also be telling people in northern Sweden, where the sun can rise as late as 9;30 am or not all, “You are bleep out of luck unless you move to some other part of the world?”