Sunshine Protection Act of 2021
Floor Speech
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am happy to bring the voice of the Ocean State to the floor today as an original cosponsor of Senator Rubio's bill to make daylight saving time permanent. I hope very much that we can actually agree to this on the floor today and hope for similar action in the House.
Pretty much everybody in Rhode Island experiences the same thing on that unhappy day in early November. It is usually the 6th or the 7th, when suddenly an hour of your day, an hour of your daylight, disappears and dusk comes an hour earlier.
And it is a sad time. People are unhappy. It does darken our lives in a very literal sense. And by the time you get from November, when we fall back, to the shortest day of the year in December, the 21st, I think it is, we have sunset in Rhode Island at 4:15--4:15. That means everybody is driving home, if they work regular 9-to-5 hours--they are driving home in the pitch dark, and there is no real need for it. So let's make it 5:15 instead.
Now, granted, there are people who are up between 6:30 and 7:30 in the morning who will lose their hour of daylight, but there are a lot fewer people up and about between 6:30 and 7:30 in the morning than there are between 4:15 and 5:15 in the afternoon.
And particularly in that afternoon hour, that is when kids have come home from school, and you would like to have them run around outside a little bit more. That is when people are doing errands, and it would be nice if there were some daylight for that.
So I am eager to be rid of ``fall back,'' and this would give us a chance for Americans all across the country to be rid of ``fall back'' and make daylight saving time permanent and to add a little sunlight into most people's lives.
With that, I will recognize the distinguished chairman of our Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Let me make it clear to anybody who is watching that they just saw this measure pass. We have just passed the bill to end the return to daylight saving time--to make daylight saving time permanent.
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