Are Americans fed up with the spring-forward fall-back routine that has us constantly checking our clocks twice a year? Yes. Is permanent daylight saving time the best way to accomplish that? No. Moving to standard time would be far better, for the health of Americans and the economy.
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Why, then, did the U.S. House recently vote 308-117 to make everyone observe DST year-round?
President Trump is encouraging this idiocy — another glaring conflict of interest for somebody who owns multiple golf courses. It’s embarrassing to see Florida politicians carrying his baggage.
Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Sarasota, sponsored H.R. 139. All of Florida’s Republicans and three of the eight Democrats — Jared Moskowitz, Darren Soto, Frederica Wilson — also voted in favor. Two local Democrats, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Lois Frankel, saw the light, voting no.
A Moskowitz spokesman said constituent mail ran strongly in support of the bill. He needs to hear from those who disagree.
Sen. Rick Scott is lead sponsor of the Senate version, which is stuck in committee. It should stay there.
These legislative sponsors aren’t reading the room. All they get right about public opinion is that just about everyone hates changing clocks twice a year. “Lock the clock” is a catchy slogan, but it’s being applied to the wrong solution.
Dark and dangerous
Medical professionals speak with a single voice: Don’t make DST worse. Repeal it instead.
A Gallup poll last year found only 40% in favor of daylight saving time, barely half as much as in the 1990s. A plurality of a different subsample, 48%, prefers standard time year-round, twice as many as favored the perpetual DST proposed in the Buchanan-Scott bills.
The House “ignored the overwhelming evidence supporting the health and safety benefits of permanent standard time and instead chose to force dark, dangerous mornings on millions of Americans who will suffer its effects,” said a statement by Dr. Fariha Abbasi-Feinberg, president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
The organization promotes legislation to return to standard time year-round. States could return to DST whenever they wish. The inflexible, one-size-fits-all House bill permits no exceptions other than for Hawaii and Arizona, which presently reject DST, and any other state that would opt out before it becomes law.
Standard time, sleep doctors point out, “aligns more closely with our internal circadian rhythms, which are crucial for regulating sleep, mood, and overall well-being.
“Research has linked the biannual switch to daylight saving time with increased risks of accidents, cardiovascular issues and mood disturbances, negatively affecting individuals and communities.”
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Bad for young people
Year-round DST addresses the clock-switching problem in altogether the wrong way.
Teenagers are highly sensitive to altered time. Anyone who has tried to rouse a 16-year-old, even during standard time, for an early mid-winter class knows that. Aside from poorer learning, there’s a heightened risk of pre-dawn accidents. Does Congress really want more of them?
Standard time — “God’s time,” as some call it — observes noon as the natural midpoint of the sun passing from dawn to dusk. Changing the clock hands doesn’t add or subtract a single moment of sunshine.
The slyly misnamed “Sunshine Protection Act” protects nothing except the potential profits of big box stores and golf courses, the traditional powers behind permanent-DST advocacy.
The most influential lobbyist for the Scott-Buchanan bill is President Trump, who owns 11 golf courses in the U.S. alone. He personally lobbied at least one senator, Louisiana’s John Kennedy.
Rural-state resistance
Midwestern farm-state Republican senators lead the opposition, with coastal senators more in support. Senate leaders doubt that year-round DST has 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.
“I can see where Florida likes it for tee times at certain times of the year, but it doesn’t work so well for moms and dads putting kids on buses when the sunrise in western Montana wouldn’t be until 9:30 in the morning. It’s not going to work for us,” Sen. Steve Daines, R-Montana, told CNN.
Nobody in Congress today was there when it made daylight saving time year-round beginning in 1974 to cope with an Arab oil embargo. Early popularity gave way to public scorn; it was repealed within a year.
Government research did not confirm any significant energy savings and there was profuse news coverage of children dying in traffic on their way to school, including eight in Florida in just the first weeks.
The National Bureau of Standards found “no significant” differences in traffic deaths, but public opinion had soured on year-round DST.
So it would again if Congress recklessly repeats the mistake.
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Executive Editor Roger Simmons, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant, Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney and editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman. Send letters to [email protected].
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