I have a search set up so that once a day, I get an email with all the stories that mention “Daylight Saving Time” and the last couple of weeks have seen a flood of them, all with a similar headline:
Is this the last time we will Fall Back and stop changing the clocks for Daylight Saving Time?
It makes sense that newsrooms would cover this, as people are asking. I was kind of shocked when I saw these results when I started typing the question into Google News:
And I know that in casual conversations, it is not a random question.
The short answer to the question of if we have to change back is this: Probably.
I wish I could say for sure that this is the last time, but I would put the odds at 50-50 at best.
Why?
It is true that the U.S. Senate passed a law that would have made this the last Fall Back. We would then Spring Forward next spring, and stay there.
But for anyone who has seen Schoolhouse Rock, the Senate is, essentially, only one of the three steps needed to turn this into law. The second step is the House of Representatives. Here in the days before the election, there is zero chance that it will get a vote.
Could it get a vote in the lame duck session after the election and before the new Congress is seated? Possible, but I think the chance is remote. If it couldn’t even get a hearing over the last summer, insiders tell me that the chances it will get a vote are slim.
This story, from the incomparable Scott Schneider (most Scotts are pretty good guys, I’ve found) places the blame in part on Rep. Jan Schakowski from Chicago. It is true that she is the head of the subcommittee that would take up the bill, and it is true that if she did hold a hearing it would help push things forward, but she is not going to push forward a bill that the leadership of the party doesn’t want pushed forward.
Maybe it is because the most recognizable face of fixing the clocks is a Republican locked in a close race in Florida? That is certainly at least one of the factors.
And once the new Congress is seated, any bills that didn’t pass in the current Congress expire, and we will have to start all over again. And it will be harder next time for a couple of reasons.
- It passed the Senate by a method called Unanimous Consent, which essentially means it was on a list with a bunch of non-controversial stuff, and no senators objected. After it was done, one or two senators said they would have objected if they had known about it. Now, it was just a couple of them, so the bill would probably pass 98-2 or whatever, but that process is just harder than the Unanimous Consent method.
- It looks as though the House will be very closely divided in 2023. Neither side will want to give the other side a victory, and so we will be stuck because of stupid politics.
It’s like my son told me years ago… The opposite of pro is con and the opposite of progress is Congress.
But I will keep pushing forward. I still have hope, especially given the amazing progress that we have made on this issue in the last five years.
And while I do think we won’t see as much activity in the states as we have in recent years as state legislators take a wait-and-see approach because of the federal legislation, there could be some activity.
For instance, I recently testified to an informal study committee in New Mexico. Unfortunately I had to do it remotely, and I couldn’t see the reactions of the people on the committee because this was my view. 😛
(Very weird watching yourself with a bit of lag being shown on a big screen like that, lemme tell you. Next time I’m dropping everything else and driving to New Mexico, a state I love, just to avoid that and also to hang out again with Cliff Pirtle, who is a #LockTheClock pioneer and also a fascinating guy.)
Sen. Pirtle was one of the first legislators I ever wrote about in 2015 and who was one of the first to invite me to testify in person in 2017. He’s got some creative ideas about how New Mexico could once again become a leader in clock sanity, but we’ll save that for another post.
For now, just hang on, and when people ask you if this is the last year we change the clocks for Daylight Saving Time, just tell them that their question is a common one, and it is based on an understandable assumption that the government might actually do something that people in general agree on, but that—unfortunately—this is likely not the last time we will have to Fall Back.