# Daylight Savings Time: Why is the US congress split on this matter

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-savings-time-why-is-the-us-congress-split-on-this-matter/974456>\
**Category:** Politics & Elections\
**Created:** [November 6, 2022, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-savings-time-why-is-the-us-congress-split-on-this-matter/974456 "2022-11-06T04:36:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 91

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**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\
**Post date:** [November 6, 2022, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-savings-time-why-is-the-us-congress-split-on-this-matter/974456/91 "2022-11-06T21:45:02Z")

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Yeah, basically it’s one of those “nobody likes what there is, but there is no consensus on what should be” situations.

And insofar as the current Congress, many in both chambers from all four sides of the issue (keep as is, go all-ST, go all-DT, DGAF) are not at all amused that the recent passage in the Senate of a permanent-DST bill was achieved through a procedural technicality with no hearings, no committee recommendation, no floor debate and no recorded vote of Ys and Ns. So the well is, if not poisoned, contaminated.

As for the substance, I quote myself from the earlier thread

> [@Does today's unanimous Senate approval of a permanent DST bill mean it's a fait accompli?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-todays-unanimous-senate-approval-of-a-permanent-dst-bill-mean-its-a-fait-accompli/961145/221):
>
> what should be really considered is a _redrawing of the time zone boundaries_. We no longer have to accommodate that the railroad’s home office is in the East Coast so therefore Indiana/Michigan/Ohio should be on Boston time – and for that matter, save for Pacific, the way they are drawn the reference longitude for each time zone is towards the east edge of the zone, rather than down the middle of it.
> 
> [reference to maps linked in that thread] the “winter sunrise too late” band cuts across the NW end of each time zone in a diagonal – so, adjust _that_: move _those_ states/counties over to the earlier-hour zone, and rename the zones. But of course, that would require someone at the responsible committee actualy sitting down and designing (or requesting the CRS and Naval Observatory to sit down and design) those new boundaries which would result in any number of congressmen arguing that their hometown _needs_ to be as close to DC time as humanly possible and we’re back to where we started with the railroads.
> 
> Which brings up […] what private businesses do about their business hours. Back in the early 20th Century someone figured the best times for office work in the East Coast were 9-to-5 EST, and it then became a matter of _everyone_ becoming expected to have office hours 9-to-5 local regardless of conditions.  
> […]  
> (One could imagine a rational world in which _schools and businesses_ change _their hours_ […] but part of the matter is that (a) we expect to have everyone be at work more or less at the same time as us (and the Transit Authority counts on that to schedule the buses) and (b) we have made non-agricultural work independent of non-extreme conditions – we have air conditioning, artificial lights, and now online connectivity that creates the expectation that I will answer a business e-mail 24/7 anywhere on the planet.

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