In January of 1974, millions of Americans traveled to work and school in darkness. Commuter trains were delayed. Schoolchildren carried flashlights. Tragically, some of these kids were struck by cars and killed while walking to school in the dark.
One woman from Long Island, speaking to The New York Times, summed up the black mood of the nation. “It’s the end,” she said. “I can’t cope anymore. … I’m just staying in bed.”
What calamity had befallen our nation? Had Soviet Russia finally attacked America? Had we suffered a nationwide power outage? Were the heavens conspiring to plunge our nation into darkness?
No. As it turns out, the answer was more mundane—and foolish. A few months earlier, Congress in its eternal wisdom had imposed a top-down change on every American’s daily life, eliminating Standard Time and adopting Daylight Savings Time year-round. Such a change to the nation’s clocks had never happened before, except as an emergency rationing measure during wartime.
While briefly popular, it proved deeply unpopular when reality set in. According to opinion polls, support for permanent Daylight Savings Time fell by 30 percentage points in just three months. Only a few weeks after it was implemented, it was underwater. Congress beat a hasty retreat, repealing the law and changing the clocks back in October. What was supposed to be a two-year experiment ended in abject failure after less than one year.
It’s said that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And that’s what would happen if Congress passes the so-called “Sunshine Protection Act,” once again ending Standard Time and imposing Daylight Savings Time year-round.
If permanent Daylight Savings Time becomes the law of the land, it will again make winter a dark and dismal time for millions of Americans.
By moving the clock back an hour in winter, permanent Daylight Savings Time would push winter sunrises to an absurdly late hour, depriving Americans of morning sunshine that’s essential for our safety and well-being.
For many Arkansans, permanent Daylight Savings Time would mean the sun wouldn’t rise until after 8:00 or even 8:30 a.m. during the dead of winter. Three months out of the year, kids in towns like Bentonville, Fayetteville, and Fort Smith would start school ahead of the sun.
Americans in northern states and on the western side of time zones would be even worse off. For instance, the sun wouldn’t rise until nearly 9:00 o’clock during winter in Seattle. In Grand Rapids, the sun would rise as late as 9:15 a.m., and in Williston, North Dakota, they would not see the sun ‘till almost 9:45 a.m.
The darkness of permanent Daylight Savings Time would be especially harmful for schoolchildren and working Americans. As we saw in 1974, kids would either walk to school in the pitch black or schools would have to push back start times. The choice would be between danger on the one hand, and disruption on the other.
Meanwhile, construction workers, farmers, and others who rise before the sun or need the sun to work would be penalized. These workers might go three, four, even five hours in the morning without seeing the sun, which would hurt their quality of life and potentially their safety in the workplace.
Then, of course, there are the health consequences of permanent Daylight Savings Time. The Senators from Alabama and Florida correctly indicate that clock changes can be bad for health, but the best evidence suggests that the natural rhythms of our internal body clocks align more closely with Standard Time than Daylight Savings Time. A shift to permanent Daylight Savings Time would make it harder to go to sleep at night and harder to wake up in the morning.
Some of the nation’s top medical associations—including the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Neurology, and the American College of Chest Physicians—have called for Daylight Savings Time to be abolished, not extended. As one sleep scientist put it, of all the options available to us, “permanent [Daylight Savings Time] is the worst solution.”
Of course, the advocates for permanent Daylight Savings Time try to put, well, a sunny face on this bill. Back in 2022, the senator from Massachusetts argued that it would mean “more daylight hours” and “more smiles.”
And, by the way, since the senator from Rhode Island mentioned it, let me say a word about what happened in 2022. We’ve heard from him that the Senate “unanimously passed” this bill. It’s true as far as it goes, but the story is a little more complicated than that. To let you in on how things operate, when senators want to seek unanimous consent to pass a bill—without a recorded vote, as my friends are doing today—an email goes out to all other Senate offices asking if a senator objects.
I didn’t personally object in 2022 for two reasons. First, I hadn’t adequately communicated to my staff the depth of my opposition to this bill. Second, because of a miscommunication, I expected another senator who also opposed the bill to object. I take full responsibility for this mistake, though the search for someone else to blame is actively ongoing. A chief suspect, as usual, may be the Republican floor secretary. In any case, it’s only a mistake if you don’t have time to fix it, and fortunately, I fixed it later that year with like-minded friends in the House.
Despite that setback, the proponents of permanent Daylight Savings Time refuse to, if you will, let the sun set on this bill. They allege, as we have heard, that the change would stimulate the economy and even save the environment by reducing energy use. On the contrary, permanent Daylight Savings Time would have negligible effects on energy use, as indicated by most studies and plain common sense. Any reduction in electricity use in the afternoon will be counterbalanced, of course, by increased use in the morning. It’s six in one hand and half a dozen in the other.
As to the supposed economic benefits, no doubt that a handful of industries would gain from the bill—that’s why they’ve lobbied so hard for it. This bill would benefit, for example, outdoor-entertainment venues, seaside resorts, and bars. My good friends from Alabama and Florida sponsor this legislation, and they’re representing their states well by doing so.
An extra hour in winter for the resorts of south Florida, the beautiful golf courses in southern Alabama and across Florida, or deep-sea fishing in the Gulf of America or the Atlantic would be welcome by many of the residents of these communities. As for my friends from Massachusetts and Rhode Island, have you ever spent a winter in Boston or Providence? The sun disappears there barely after 4:00 p.m. Little wonder they’ve joined the effort. These senators represent states that overwhelmingly benefit from year-round Daylight Savings Time because of their latitude and longitude.
I understand and respect their positions, but as is often the case, these highly concentrated benefits for a few industries in a few regions are offset by widely distributed costs across many more industries throughout the entire country. And that’s to say nothing of moms sending their kids to school in the dark of night.
So why should we repeat history? It’s probably because we’ve forgotten it. Most people don’t remember the permanent Daylight Savings Time debacle of 1974. And just about everyone hates to “spring forward, fall back,” as the saying goes. I don’t like the biannual clock change any more than the rest of you do. But unless we’re willing to adopt permanent Standard Time and sacrifice the extra hour of evening light in the spring and summer for Little League ballgames and summer vacations across the country, there’s not much to be done.
Which is, when you think about it, a fundamentally conservative outlook. Not every human problem has a legislative solution. Sometimes we have to live with an uneasy compromise between competing priorities and interests. That’s doubly true when considering how the movement of the stars and the planets affects the lives of 350 million souls spread across our vast continental nation.
It brings to mind the story of King Canute, who wanted to teach his sycophants a lesson about the limits of mankind’s power. He famously set his throne on the seashore and forbade the tide from coming in. Of course, the tide nonetheless came in, and, as a historian recounted, “disrespectfully drenched the king’s feet and shins.”
The moral of the story, the king reminded his fawning court, is that “the power of kings is empty and worthless, and there is no king worthy of the name save Him by whose will heaven, earth and sea obey eternal laws.”
Good King Canute’s wise words are as true now as they were then. No earthly ruler—not even this Congress—can alter the movements of the heavens—not today, not in 1974, not ever.
I therefore oppose the Sunshine Protection Act and will always oppose any effort to adopt Daylight Savings Time year-round.
