US set to fall back to standard time as Congress stays idle on bill preventing it

by RAY LEWIS | The National News Desk

topics:

• Daylight saving
• Sunshine Protection Act
• Standard time
• Congress
• Senate recess
• Midterms
• Public health
• Polling

topics:

HUNT VALLEY, Md. (TNND) — The country's on track to fall back and return to standard time in November as Congress stays idle on legislation preventing it.

Daylight saving time will stop the first of the month, at the tail end of the Senate's month-long recess. The chamber has sat on a House bill passed in July that would end standard time.

Senate Republicans haven't shown much interest in pushing the bill, called the Sunshine Protection Act, toward the top of their agenda, which also includes measures on college sports, farming and permitting. Punting the sunlight bill until after the recess puts it in further jeopardy, as the November 3rd midterms present the possibility of a flip in Senate control and a lame-duck session in the late fall.

The act has scrambled Congress's partisan lines, which a number of lawmakers from both parties have crossed to weigh in on the daylight debate. More than a hundred House Democrats voted for the GOP-sponsored bill, while 22 Republicans broke with their party.

A similar fate could await the act in the Senate. Washington Democrat Patty Murray has called on her colleagues to "lock the clock" and switch to a system she says could improve public health, a claim combatted by skepticism among some Republicans.

Senator Shelley Moore Capito, the West Virginia Republican, said this past summer that, with darker mornings, kids heading to school could face more dangers.

“I’m undecided as to what I would do because I just don’t have a good feel for the heavy impacts on agriculture and school systems in West Virginia, but I don’t want to do something that would endanger the safety of our children as they’re going to school or coming home from school,” she told reporters.

Polling shows most Americans dislike the current system, but they're more divided on how to reform it. The Associated Press and the research firm NORC found last fall that 56 percent of adults preferred permanent daylight saving time, while 42 percent wanted only standard time.

Experts on the health effects of each alternative system have leaned toward permanent standard time. Ken Wright, the head of the University of Colorado's sleep and biological rhythm lab, said last month that daylight saving time is the worse option for humans' inner clocks.

"Standard time is more closely aligned with the natural patterns in the environment under which we, as humans, have evolved," he said. "For instance, under standard time, we get lots of morning light, and the sun is high in the sky above us around noon. Under daylight saving time, there’s less morning light and the sun is high in the sky when the clock says 1 p.m.—after midday."

Do you have questions, concerns or tips? Send them to Ray at [email protected].

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