US Senate passes bill to make Daylight Saving Time permanent - Only has to pass the House and POTUS...

The US Senate on Tuesday passed a bill to make Daylight Saving Time permanent year round.

The bipartisan legislation, dubbed the “Sunshine Protection Act,” sponsored by Senator Marco Rubio and co-sponsored by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and others, passed the Senate by unanimous consent.

A summary of the bill states that the legislation would make Daylight Saving Time, which is currently observed from March through November, “the new, permanent standard time.” Though winter-weary residents of the Northeast may welcome the news, the bill would need to be passed by the House and signed by President Biden in order to become law.

Rubio said on the Senate floor Tuesday that, if passed and signed into law, the bill would not take effect until late 2023 to allow airlines and other industries time to make adjustments to schedules.

Rubio called for the House to pass the legislation quickly.

“I know this is not the most important issue confronting America, but it’s one of those issues where there’s a lot of agreement,” Rubio said.

Proposals to make Daylight Saving Time permanent have been floated frequently in recent years, including last year when the Sunshine Protection Act was introduced with Senator Ed Markey as a co-sponsor, but it had not been passed by the Senate. Efforts to make it permanent have also been considered by Massachusetts lawmakers.

But momentum has been building in recent years, with lawmakers coming out in favor of doing away with Americans’ twice annual tradition of changing the clocks.

On Sunday, as Daylight Saving Time began, Senator Cory Booker took to TikTok to advocate for making it permanent.

“So on Sunday, the overlords are going to tell us to spring forward, to change our clocks. Why? There is no good reason twice a year we’re springing forward, falling back,” he said.

This breaking news story will be updated.

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Christina Prignano can be reached at christina.prignano@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @cprignano.

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(There are 2 images -- one random tweet from a random blue checkmark and a city skyline at twilight. I cannot attach them right now [will try again later], but they add nothing to the story. Also, this is my first A&N article/thread, yay!)

 

[DumbDude42]

so basically the US is just shifting time zones by 1 hour?

 

[naaaaiiiiillllll!!!]

AZ opted out for the same reason it's weird Rubio's on board - they don't have the variety in day length between seasons and it's warm enough that the extra heating costs become a burden.
It really should be a North-South thing. Whining about clock changes is weird af to me in a land where increasingly everyone has at least one device that grabs its time from some ntp server on the local cellular network and the actual work of updating locally-sourced clocks is maybe 15 minutes for your average household.


It was the invention of some Wilsonian bureaucrat to save on electricity/oil costs in northern cities, naturally.

Some of my non-Kiwi acquaintances are already kinda irritated with abolishing DST as well. I joked that this will be a new North-South Civil War: not due to slavery or tariffs, but due to who gets more sunlight during business hours.

 

[drfuzzyballs]

Either abolishing it or making it permanent I would support ending our twice annual nuisance.

 

[Absolutego]

so basically the US is just shifting time zones by 1 hour?

Yes, but in a way that's kinda stupid and I just realized will probably set the environmentalists on a tear, because it'll be more greenhouse emissions to cool households in Southern states now, if literally all 50 states have to switch to it, instead of letting each state decide themselves.
On second thought, I don't think is getting through the House, at least not without amendments.

 

[Don't Tread on Me]

I'm guessing DST is a trend Americans hate.

It is a well documented fact that the week following DST (in March) is the worst one of the year for traffic accidents.

No reason to fuck with our sleep schedules

 

[naaaaiiiiillllll!!!]

Yes, but in a way that's kinda stupid and I just realized will probably set the environmentalists on a tear, because it'll be more greenhouse emissions to cool households in Southern states now, if literally all 50 states have to switch to it, instead of letting each state decide themselves.
On second thought, I don't think is getting through the House, at least not without amendments.

On paper, this sounds fair, but I'm getting a "dry county law" red flag, where instead of consistently having our twice annual changing clocks, every goddamn county in every state decides if they observe it or not.

Personally, consistency and ease is more important than anything. Environmentalists be damned (most businesses run 24/7 anyway so AC/Heating never shuts off during non-business hours). Besides, isn't shutting off heating/AC only to turn them on ~8 hours later draw about as much energy? Something about re-heating/cooling a building back to operating temperatures?

 

[Ita Mori]

Kickass.

 

[Daddy's Little Kitten]

Good. I hate DST. My wrassling shows are one hour late and it fucks with my sleeping schedule. We don't do DST here because we aren't faggots.

 

[DocMorbis]

How would THIS work?

Whenever the time changes it stays that way. As once the clocks move back in late 2023 it will just stay that way.

Congress finally did something right for once.

 

[The Last Stand]

Whenever the time changes it stays that way. As once the clocks move back in late 2023 it will just stay that way.

Congress finally did something right for once.

That WILL be more convienent. I didn't know this was a LAW.

 

[Absolutego]

On paper, this sounds fair, but I'm getting a "dry county law" red flag, where instead of consistently having our twice annual changing clocks, every goddamn county in every state decides if they observe it or not.

Personally, consistency and ease is more important than anything. Environmentalists be damned (most businesses run 24/7 anyway so AC/Heating never shut off during non-business hours).

I don't think aside from Maaaaaaaaybe California there's a state with enough North-South stretch that there'd be genuinely different opinions between counties on whether or not they'd switch to perma-DST or perma-ST.
Like to give you an example, the State of Washington passed permanent DST unanimously in the 2019 legislature. You can't get east siders and west siders to agree on what color the sky is around here, but no one had issue with another hour of light in the winter.

 

[Fomo Hoire]

To follow the A&N tradition of nigging it all up, benefits of DST:

The 1/8 of the population that is too retarded to find the DMV or manually vote straight ticket is probably also too dumb to change their clock without waiting until midnight to plug the batteries in.

The other 7/8 of the population gets another hour of daylight in which they can see the 1/8 on the streets without holding out a cellphone or flashlight and basically screaming "MUG ME!".

 

[naaaaiiiiillllll!!!]

I don't think aside from Maaaaaaaaybe California there's a state with enough North-South stretch that there'd be genuinely different opinions between counties on whether or not they'd switch to perma-DST or perma-ST.
Like to give you an example, the State of Washington passed permanent DST unanimously in the 2019 legislature. You can't get east siders and west siders to agree on what color the sky is around here, but no one had issue with another hour of light in the winter.

I really want to believe, but going back to Arizona, my favorite special state, the entire NE corner is part of the Navajo Nation (giant reservation), which observes DST, while the rest of AZ does not. An enclave rez inside the Navajo Nation and AZ, the Hopi Reservation, does NOT observe DST (following the rest of non-Navajo AZ). So you can drive 30 miles and have to change your clocks 3+ times (Hopi Reservation has a bunch of exclaves within the Navajo Nation if you drive AZ State Route 264).

This is A&N, so I expect a bunch of "lol, dumb injun" comments, but I can see this happening everywhere in the USA if we allow it.

 

[Absolutego]

I really want to believe, but going back to Arizona, my favorite special state, the entire NE corner is part of the Navajo Nation (giant reservation), which observes DST, while the rest of AZ does not. An enclave rez inside the Navajo Nation and AZ, the Hopi Reservation, does NOT observe DST (following the rest of non-Navajo AZ). So you can drive 30 miles and have to change your clocks 3+ times.

This is A&N, so I expect a bunch of "lol, dumb injun" comments, but I can see this happening everywhere in the USA if we allow it.

Fun fact: the Navajo stuck with DST because they have territory that extends into Utah and New Mexico, and didn't want to follow Arizona in ignoring DST because it'd require they change clocks within their own borders, and New Mexico and Utah weren't willing to give them a similar exception.
I don't think that's a phenomenon you'd see too too much with State Legislatures, since it's mostly borne out of the messy reservation system ignoring state borders, but I do get your overall point.

 

[Diesel Boogaloo]

I wonder how many devices cannot update their software and will keep changing clocks. But I guess you can always set them to some other timezone that doesn't have DST.

 

[Equivocal_Iki]

Why couldn't they pass this in the fall? Now I lose an hour and it's permanent.

 

[Helium Bubble]

Having handled all the really horrendous problems, they've now moved on to cleaning up all the small ones! Great news, everyone!

 

[Absolutego]

I wonder how many devices cannot update their software and will keep changing clocks. But I guess you can always set them to some other timezone that doesn't have DST.

For the vast majority of internet-of-things devices, it's not an internally programmed schedule, but a call to the network's NTP server for a time sync, which means you'd only have to change the rules for that one server and every host that pings it would automatically get with the program.
I don't think even Linux installers, who were last to get with the program, have required manual time zone entry for installs outside of explicitly offline ones.

 

[Bonedome]

This is the most retarded idea I've ever seen. We're going to get rid of standard time? I'm so mad I can't even articulate it.

 

[Testacles Maximus]

I like when it gets darker earlier for some reason, but why are they worrying about this shit when weed is still illegal on a federal level. Fix that first.