Bryn Healy ’24
News Editor
Last year, a bill to end daylight saving was passed in the Senate. Later, the bill died in the House. According to The New York Times, Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida reintroduced the bill to the Senate on March 1.
In the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Republican Representative of the 16th District of Florida Vern Buchanan is quoted saying “[t]here are enormous health and economic benefits to making daylight saving time permanent. Florida lawmakers have already voted to make daylight saving time permanent in my home state and Congress should pass the Sunshine Protection Act to move Florida and the rest of the country to year-round daylight saving time.”
In a show of bipartisan support, the Sunshine Protection Act is co-sponsored by both Democrats and Republicans, including Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey. According to NBC, the previous iteration of the bill passed in the Senate unanimously. The bill would make the time during daylight saving, also known as the hours we have during the summertime, the standard year-round.
Numerous groups have come out in favor of abolishing daylight saving time in past years. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine released a statement in 2020 saying that there should be a standardized time year-round in order to reduce the risks of “adverse cardiovascular events, mood disorders and motor vehicle crashes.” According to The New York Times, six U.S. states and territories and parts of Arizona have already abolished daylight saving within regional borders.
64 percent of a sample of 1000 U.S. adults want to stop changing clocks, with 53 percent wanting permanent daylight saving time, according to a YouGov poll in 2022.
The origin of daylight saving time is commonly believed to be for the benefit for farmers in the summer, but this is actually a myth. The change in time bi-annually was enacted in order to save electricity and oil during World War I, NBC explained