The Sunshine Protection Act of 2023 is gaining support

It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything about the Sunshine Protection Act, which hit a brick wall in the House last year. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who introduced the bill to make daylight saving time permanent in the United States, reintroduced a bill to the Senate on Wednesday.

So far, the Sunshine Protection Act of 2023 has bipartisan support in the Senate and has been referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

“This ritual of changing time twice a year is stupid,” Rubio said in a statement Thursday morning, according to a news report. “Locking the clock has overwhelming bipartisan and popular support. This Congress, I hope that we can finally get this done.”

The new Sunshine Protection Act is similar to the bill introduced last year. If it passes this time, the clocks would change for the last time, later this month, when daylight saving time begins — and would not change again in November, or ever again. The permanent change would mean that we lose an hour of daylight in the morning from November to early March because sunrise would go from 7:15 a.m. to 8:15 a.m.

The previous bill passed the Senate unanimously, but it wasn’t well received in the House, with some lawmakers arguing that other matters were more important and wanted additional research and discussion regarding the bill.

Since 1918, the United States has observed daylight saving time, according to the University of Colorado Boulder. It was repealed in 1919 because initially, it was a wartime measure. However, in 1942, during World War II, daylight saving time was reinstated, but it wasn’t until 1966, when Congress passed the Uniform Time Act, that the biannual clock-changing became the norm, according to a news report.

As a way to combat the national energy crisis in late 1973, the US tried observing daylight saving time on a permanent basis.

It quickly became unfavorable, though, because parents began to worry about the safety of their children who had to go to school before the sun came up. There was also concern about traffic accidents.

Then-president Gerald Ford signed a bill to put the US back on standard time for four months. That action came in the fall of 1974.

More recently, many states have been trying to stop the twice-ayear changing of the clocks.

Hawaii and Arizona do not observe the time change at all.

The time change does seem to take a toll on people when we have to spring forward. While it doesn’t appear that an hour should make much of a difference, even the American Academy of Sleep Medicine has called for the US to ditch the tradition and stay on permanent standard time.

Licensed clinical Psychologist and President of the AASM Jennifer Martin said in a news report that permanent standard time “is the best option for our health and well-being.”

We agree with Martin. While it’s not clear what fate awaits Rubio’s bill, we hope that it finally gains enough support to stop the changing of the clocks.

Despite the loss of an hour of daylight, we think it would be more beneficial to stay on standard time permanently.