Sunshine Protection Act of 2021
Floor Speech
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Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, let me cut right to the chase here before I get into a statement.
623, a bill to make daylight saving time permanent, and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.
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Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, as the day goes on, I look forward to others who will be coming to the floor here in a moment. You will see it is an eclectic collection of Members of the U.S. Senate in favor of what we have just done here in the Senate, and that is to pass a bill to make daylight saving time permanent.
Just this past weekend, we all went through that biannual ritual of changing the clock back and forth and the disruption that comes with it. And one has to ask themselves after a while: Why do we keep doing it? Why are we doing this?
This really began back in 1918 as a practice that was supposed to save energy, and since then we have adjusted it.
Today, daylight saving time, which started out as 6 months, was extended to 8 months in 2005, clearly showing you what people's preference was. So we are doing this back-and-forth of clock-changing for about 16 weeks of standard time a year.
Now, I think the majority of the American people's preference is just to stop the back-and-forth changing. But beyond that, I think their preference is, certainly, at least based on today's vote and what we have heard, is to make daylight saving time permanent.
I will just tell you a couple of the reasons why I think that is important. There is some strong science behind it that is now showing and making people aware of the harm that clock-switching has. We see an increase in heart attacks and car accidents and pedestrian accidents in the week that follow the changes.
The benefits of daylight saving time have also been accounted for in the research; for example, reduced crime, as there is light later in the day. We have seen decreases in child obesity, a decrease in seasonal depression that many feel during standard time, and then the practical one and the one that I have witnessed with my own eyes.
In many parts of this country--understand, we are a country where we desperately want our kids to be outside, to be playing, to be doing sports, not just to be sitting in front of a TV or a computer terminal or playing video games all day. And it gets really tough in many parts of the country to be able to do that because what ends up happening is, especially for these 16 weeks a year, if you don't have a park or an outdoor facility with lights, you are basically shut down around 5 p.m., in some places as early as 4, 4:30 p.m. And these lights in parks and things like that are expensive, and then a lot of communities are resistant to them, right?
I have seen it with my own eyes. I have watched sporting events be called--youth sporting events--in the middle or near the end of the game before it has actually concluded because there is not enough light.
So I just think that is one of the practical reasons why, if you look at the way we live in this country, you want to have the ability to spend more time in the evenings outdoors, not just to enjoy the outdoors but to make sporting and outdoor activities available for people at a time when, frankly, we are losing an hour, an hour and a half in some parts of the country because of daylight.
So I am hoping that after today, this will go over to the House, and they will act quickly on it.
I know this is not the most important issue confronting America, but it is one of those issues where there is a lot of agreement, and I think a lot of people wonder why it took so long to get here.
So my hope is that after we are done here today, that the House will take it up; that the House will pass it; and that the President will sign it.
I just want to lay out one caveat. This bill and the amendment does delay its implementation, and the reason why--and I asked. Believe me, I asked: Why are we delaying this? And I think it is important. We are delaying it until November of 2023 because airlines, the rails, transportation methods, others have already built out schedules based on the existing timeline of this. And so they have asked for a few additional months here--from industries like broadcasters and airlines--to make that adjustment.
But the good news is that if we can get this passed, we don't have to keep doing this stupidity anymore. And why we would enshrine this in our laws and keep it for so long is beyond me, but hopefully this is the year that this gets done.
And pardon the pun, but this is an idea whose time has come.
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