It really has come to this: Americans can’t even agree on what time it is. As most of us were springing our clocks forward and feeling like we were robbed of another hour of sleep last weekend, debates on the wisdom or folly of daylight-saving time raged across the nation.
Texas is among a few states considering whether to join Hawaii and Arizona in staying on standard time. Others want to stay on daylight-saving time, and not fall back an hour to standard time in November. President Trump signaled his support for the latter—though under the quirky 1966 law establishing daylight-saving time, staying on it year-round would take an act of Congress.
Confused yet? Consider how confounding it would be if there were a chaotic quilt of states from sea to shining sea choosing to set their own time of day. You’d have to wonder what time it is not just when crossing or calling across time zones, but state lines as well. And your favorite TV program—would it be on at 8 p.m. Eastern or Texan?
That alone is reason enough for Texas lawmakers to call a timeout before monkeying with the time of day on a state level. This really needs to be a national decision, though there’s always room, as there is now, for a very few rogue states to opt out.
Granted, it is rather silly, especially in this day and age, to arbitrarily require nearly every American household twice a year to change every clock, every watch and every time-keeping appliance in one’s household.
Moreover, as The New York Times noted last weekend, “accidents, heart attacks and strokes tend to occur in greater numbers around the time shift.” Accidents no doubt include falling off ladders while trying to change high-mounted wall clocks.
Given that retailers have liked daylight-saving time ever since New York tried it in the 1920s following similar practice during World War I—and summer tourists and outdoor-lovers enjoy the extra hour of evening sunlight—year-round daylight-saving might be the choice in a national debate.
Regardless of which we choose—standard time or daylight-saving—there is growing momentum to, as state Sen. Jose Menendez, D-San Antonio, puts it, “pick a time and stick with it.” Menendez, whose Senate Bill 190 would opt the state out of daylight-saving after November’s rollback, says he doesn’t ultimately care which time we choose; just choose one, he says, and stop the “flipping back and forth.”
A similar bill—House Bill 49, filed by state Rep. Lyle Larson, R-San Antonio— was scheduled to be discussed by the House State Affairs Committee.
Paradoxically, while either doing away with daylight-saving time or keeping it year-round has momentum at the water cooler, it likely has little traction in the state Capitol.
But that’s a good thing.
It may not be the most important matter to reach the Capitol steps in Washington, D.C. But ultimately, a Congress that rarely seems to know will ultimately have to tell us what time it is.
Until then, two time changes a year are preferable to 50 different time zones.