On Sunday, Americans awoke to both good and bad news. The good: They’d gotten an extra hour of sleep. (Unless they used that additional time to party more than they should have.) The bad: It was going to get dark an hour earlier. Yes, Daylight Savings Time — when the nation’s clocks are collectively adjusted so as to extend daytime hours a little further into the evening, usually ranging from mid-March to either late October or early November — had come to an end, to the consternation of, among other, Jimmy Kimmel. Now the days would be “shorter” and seasonal affective disorder was about to rear its ugly head.
It’s usually around this time that people who love the Daylight Savings stretch beg lawmakers to make it permanent. As it happens, a group of legislators have been trying. They’re a motley crew of politicians who are usually at loggerheads. And wouldn’t you know they’re led by no less than Florida Republican senator Marco Rubio.
A new piece by Politico examines the passionate voices on either side of the debate. One is for making Daylight Savings Time permanent, and is called #LocktheClock. The other — far more villainous, of course — is about continuing to cruelly adjust the clocks two times a year, called Save Standard Time. Only the #LocktheClock team has the support of one of the most dunkable members of the GOP:
Rubio, the Republican senator from Florida, has introduced legislation that would make daylight saving time permanent across the country (besides those states or territories that do not participate in daylight saving time). His argument: the country needs to end the “annual craziness of changing the clock, falling back, springing forward.” Rubio has submitted the legislation, known as the Sunshine Protection Act, as an amendment to this year’s defense spending bill.
“We need to stop doing it. There’s no justification for it,” Rubio said in a prerecorded statement released earlier this month. “The overwhelming majority of members of Congress approve that and support it. Let’s get it done, let’s get it passed, so that we never have to do this stupid change again.”
This is a real “a broken clock is right twice a day” situation. (Ditto a chance to use a variation on Clickhole’s famed “The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point” meme.) But Rubio’s not the only person of, shall we say, questionable authority to support this legislation. Tennessee Representative (and anti-Fauci-ite) Marsha Blackburn is also in the group, alongside such Democrats as Senator Edward Markey.
Will they ever be able to axe Standard Time? Perhaps! According to Politico, since 2018, a total of 19 states have “enacted legislation or passed a resolution or voter initiative that move to make daylight saving time permanent.” It’s just up to Congress to authorize the measure before the states can kill it dead. They’re, of course, a little busy these days, but if there’s one subject that could potentially cause a beyond rare moment of bipartisanship, it’s this. We can’t believe we’re saying this, but, uh, save us, Marco Rubio.
(Via Politico)