The House Rules Committee voted 6-4 on Monday to advance the Sunshine Protection Act — House Bill 139 of the 119th Congress — clearing the way for a full House vote to ending the twice-yearly changing of the clocks. The bill already sailed through the House Energy and Commerce Committee back in May with a 48-1 vote.
Forty-eight to one. Finding 48 members of Congress who agree on lunch is a minor miracle. Finding 48 who agree on a piece of legislation is practically supernatural.
The bill, sponsored by Representative Vern Buchanan, a Republican from Florida, would end the twice-a-year clock change that Americans have hated for forever. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie, a Republican from Kentucky, noted that Americans "overwhelmingly support ending the practice." President Trump has called the current system a "ridiculous, twice-yearly production" and backs permanent daylight saving time as "the far more popular alternative."
Buchanan argues that permanent daylight saving time could "improve public health, reduce traffic accidents, and encourage outdoor activity." He's got backup on the traffic point. A University of Colorado Boulder study found a 6% increase in fatal car crashes during the workweek following the spring time change. The American Heart Association has linked the clock switch to spikes in heart attacks and strokes.
So we're changing clocks twice a year, and it's literally killing people. Seems like a fixable problem.
Approximately 20 states have already enacted laws saying they'd adopt permanent daylight saving time — if Congress gives the green light. Hawaii and most of Arizona already skip the whole charade entirely. The federal government is the bottleneck here, which should surprise exactly no one.
The opposition does exist. Representative Mary Gay Scanlon, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, has raised concerns that permanent daylight saving time would force schoolchildren — to "travel in darkness during winter mornings." It's a fair point. Congress actually tried year-round daylight saving time back in 1974 and abandoned it, partly over those same winter-morning darkness concerns.
But the 1974 experiment was a different era. We weren't comparing it against decades of data showing the health costs of the current system. A 6% jump in fatal crashes and documented cardiac events aren't abstract risks — they're body counts that show up every March like clockwork. The question isn't whether permanent DST is perfect. It's whether it's better than what we're doing now.
This isn't new legislative territory either. A similar bill passed the Senate unanimously in 2022 — unanimously but stalled in the House because leadership never brought it to a vote. The Sunshine Protection Act has been bouncing around Capitol Hill for years, accumulating bipartisan support and going nowhere.
Twenty states are waiting. The data is clear. The Senate already said yes once. The committee vote was 48-1.
The only thing standing between Americans and never touching their clocks again is the House finding time on the calendar. Which, given the subject matter, feels appropriate.