Daylight Saving Time in 2024: Massachusetts Senator Markey Renews Effort to Make Daylight Saving Time Permanent

Every year, you can be sure of two things: Americans will leap forward and retreat, causing endless grumbling from your sleep-deprived fellow citizens.

Also: Lawmakers on Capitol Hill will again try to make daylight saving time permanent.

Days before Americans set their clocks to 2 a.m. on Sunday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers, including U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., sent out a reminder that they were trying to abolish the biennial ritual.

Markey, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and 10 of their Senate colleagues pioneered the optimistically named system Sunshine Protection Act in March, shortly before the start of daylight saving time, Reuters reports this..

The latest bill past in the Senate in March 2022, lawmakers said in a statement. However, he failed to clear the US House of Representatives, casting a shadow over these reform efforts.

“This dizzying ritual of falling back and jumping forward has been going on for quite some time,” Markey wrote in an email.

“It’s not just a nuisance—changing our clocks also has very real impacts on our economy, our health, and our happiness,” he continued.

Rubio, whose home state rarely lacks sunshine, added that “it’s time to lock the clocks and stop tolerating the ridiculous and outdated practice of setting our clocks forward and back.”

• Read more: Daylight saving time 2024: don’t forget to turn back the clocks on this day

Capitol Hill lawmakers last amended federal law in 2005, when Markey, then in the House, and U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, D-Mich., with language that changed the start of daylight saving time from the first Sunday in April to the first Sunday . in March and its end date from the last Sunday in October to the first Sunday in November.

Ending the twice-yearly clock change is popular across the country, with nearly two-thirds of Americans in favor of it, according to Council of State Governmentsin which studies are cited American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

In addition to Congress, lawmakers in state capitals across the country have also tried to make daylight saving time permanent. In 2023 legislators in 29 statesThe US, including Massachusetts, has put forward its own proposals.

In 2022, Colorado Governor Jared Polis also signed the law make it permanent — with some contingencies, according to the Council of State Governments.

One big one? First, federal law had to be changed. Four states in the Mountain Time Zone would also be required to adopt the same change, according to a summary of the bill.