Congress hits snooze on ending time shifts

WASHINGTON — The House is set to hit the snooze button on the Senate's plan to permanently change the nation's clocks.

"It could be weeks — or it could be months" before House Democratic leaders decide whether to tee up a vote on eliminating the biannual clock changes that have governed daily life in most states for decades, said Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., D.-N.J., who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

While the Sunshine Protection Act, which unanimously passed the Senate last Tuesday, would nationally shift clocks an hour later to maximize daylight, some doctors have argued that adopting permanent standard time instead would be a healthier option and better align with humans' natural rhythms.

Pallone, who held a hearing last week on daylight saving time, said he shares the Senate's goal to end the "spring forward" and "fall back" clock changes linked to more strokes, heart attacks and car wrecks. But he wants to collect more information, asking for a long-delayed federal analysis on how time changes might affect productivity, traffic and energy costs, among other issues.

"There isn't a consensus, in my opinion in the House, or even generally at this point, about whether we should have standard versus daylight saving as the permanent time," Pallone said. "Immediately after the Senate passed the bill, I had members come up to me on the floor and say, 'Oh, don't do that. I want the standard time,'" he added, declining to identify the lawmakers.

In Iowa, the state House on March 7 passed House File 2331, which makes daylight saving time the permanent time in Iowa — with caveats. The Iowa House version says the change takes affect only when federal lawmakers allow the change. An amendment in the Iowa Senate keeps that, but also adds that it not take effect until neighboring states — Minnesota, Illinois, Nebraska, Missouri, South Dakota and Wisconsin — have made the change, too. The full Iowa Senate has not voted on the bill yet.

The White House also has not communicated its position on permanent daylight saving time, congressional aides said. While President Joe Biden, as a freshman senator, voted for that in December 1973 — the last time Congress attempted to institute the policy nationwide — he also witnessed the near-immediate collapse of support amid widespread reports that darker winter mornings were contributing to more car crashes and worsened moods.

The White House and Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office declined to answer questions Friday about daylight saving time policy.

The Senate plan boasts bipartisan support, led by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the health panel chair and No. 3 Democrat, and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. The two steered the bill that passed the chamber through a procedure known as unanimous consent, which eliminates the need for debate or an actual vote count if no senator objects to a measure.

Backers of permanent daylight saving time argue that adding an hour of daylight later in the day would boost commerce and lead to mental health gains, as people go out to shop, eat and spend time outdoors. Murray and Rubio also point to states like Washington and Florida that have sought to adopt permanent daylight saving time but are waiting on federal approval to do so.

"Springing forward and falling back year after year only creates unnecessary confusion while harming Americans' health and our economy," Murray wrote Pelosi in a letter sent Friday that her office shared with The Washington Post. "I hope, once again, for your immediate consideration of this common-sense legislation."

Lawmakers seeking to change national time policies are working against the clock, said Thomas Gray, a University of Texas at Dallas political science professor who has studied more than a century of congressional legislation on daylight saving time.

The issue "has these unusual dynamics, where there's really only two weeks of the year where people care about it" — the week in the spring when the clocks spring forward an hour, and the week in the fall when the clocks fall back, Gray said. "It usually takes more than a week to do something in Congress. And it's hard to fit that time-period when people actually care into the process of passing a bill."

The next clock change is set for Nov. 6 — two days before lawmakers stand for election.

That counter-lobby has already sprung into action, with advocates warning that shifting the clock later would lead to winter sunrises after 9 a.m. in cities like Indianapolis and Detroit, forcing schoolchildren and many workers to commute in the dark.

Health experts have also renewed their concerns that shifting to permanent daylight saving time would disrupt circadian rhythms by forcing people onto an unnatural sleep schedule.

Congress first instituted daylight saving time in 1919 and has subsequently held multiple votes to lengthen or shorten it. Those efforts climaxed in 1973, when lawmakers voted for a two-year national trial of permanent daylight saving time, spurred on by President Richard M. Nixon, who argued that it would save energy in the midst of an energy crisis triggered by the oil boycott of the United States by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC.

But amid reports that the dark mornings were leading to traffic crashes, and with little evidence the plan substantially cut energy costs, political figures began calling for the law's repeal within days of its passage. By March 1974, a Senate measure to repeal the change narrowly failed in a 48-43 vote; Biden sat out that vote. (The White House did not respond to a question about why Biden did not vote.)

"We have experimented with daylight saving time through one dark winter — and one winter is enough," said former Sen. Dick Clark, an Iowa Democrat, calling for repeal on Aug. 15, 1974. "I hope the Senate will take this opportunity to settle the question, not only for this winter, but for those to come."

The following week, the House voted 383-16 to repeal permanent daylight saving time, which the Senate agreed to in a voice vote in September 1974. President Gerald Ford swiftly signed the bill.

Pallone said that the quick collapse of the 1970s-era plan shows the hazards of rushing to adopt permanent daylight saving time.

″What that points out to you and to me is that you're not going to make everybody happy, right?" he said. "That's why I say, we need to spend some time trying to figure out, is there a consensus?"

As the debate rages, Pallone said some lawmakers have floated an idea in the spirit of Washington compromise.

"I've actually had some people tell me, 'why don't you just split the difference? … Make it half an hour,'" he said.