That Daylight Saving Time Bill Passed Because A Bunch of Senators Just Weren’t Paying Attention

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

The United States Senate has a well-established history of proud traditions and arcane procedures — how many Americans really understand what a “cloture vote” is? — and as Schoolhouse Rock taught us, it’s normally a “long, long journey” for a bill to become a law.

Except, sometimes, it’s not.

That’s what happened with the “Sunshine Protection Act,” which passed earlier this week when Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) asked for unanimous consent to pass the bill. If it becomes law, it would extend Daylight Saving Time permanently, ending the biannual American ritual of grumbling curse words while you try to remember how to change the clock on your car stereo display.

“Unanimous consent” allows a bill to bypass the normally-arduous path through the relevant Senate committee, approval from the Senate Majority Leader to bring the bill to the floor, a vote by at least 60 of the 100 Senators to allow debate, hours and hours of debates as various Senators get their C-SPAN screen time, amendments that can interrupt the whole process or send it back to the beginning, and finally a vote on the actual content of the bill itself.

Or, as Rubio did on Tuesday, a Senator can bring up a bill, ask for unanimous consent, and then, if no one objects, the bill passes and is then sent to the House, and if they approve it, sent to the President to decide whether to sign the bill into law.

Any single Senator can object to a bill brought up for unanimous consent and that will block it.

But no one did on Tuesday, thanks in part to a lot of them having no idea it was even happening, according to BuzzFeed News reporter Paul McLeod.

McLeod writes that getting a bill passed through the Senate is “by design, a long and painful process that usually results in shattered dreams and bitter failure,” and usually far more difficult than passing a bill in the House.

The standard courtesy in the Senate is for a Senator who wishes to bring up a bill on unanimous consent to “hotline” the bill, notifying their colleagues of the plan, and the other Senators can then notify the sponsoring Senator that they refuse to consent, or are placing a “hold” on the bill.

Those who have observed the American political process for more than a nanosecond will be unsurprised to learn that Senators frequently go ahead and call for unanimous consent even when there’s a hold, knowing the bill will not pass but they will still get their floor speech to expound upon the marvelous virtues of their brilliant legislation and tell their constituents back home that they are fighting. Fighting for them! And the Constitution and Mom and apple pie and all that jazz.

Rubio was joined by Florida’s junior Senator, Rick Scott, in promoting a similar bill in 2020 that would have made Daylight Saving Time permanent. The bill went nowhere but the two lawmakers got to send out a press release and racked up several generally positive mentions in state media outlets (and here at Mediaite).

That kind of minor PR win seems to have been Rubio’s original goal this week. He told BuzzFeed that Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) had put a hold on the bill and his flight was delayed. Rubio moved his request for unanimous consent to Tuesday so Wicker would be able to block it — but then Wicker decided not to bother.

The Mississippi Republican had expressed concerns about children being at increased danger having to go to school in the morning while it’s still dark, but “chose not to stand in the way” because he was “more interested in fighting other battles,” like issues related to the war in Ukraine.

Still, with 98 other Senators who all had the ability to block the bill, it was not expected to pass. But many of them were not informed by their staff about the bill. Rubio’s office maintains they sent out the usual notices, but such communications are frequently filtered by various senior Senate staffers, and they don’t always pester their bosses with items viewed as minor or unlikely to pass.

“It’s literally an issue my staff and I had never discussed and they made an assumption that I don’t really care about daylight saving time,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE). “And I don’t know if I do! I’ve never taken five minutes to stop and think about it.”

Like Coons, a number of Senators had no idea the bill had passed until it was all over, and shocked members of the political press corps reported the news.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) in particular is known to be a vocal opponent to making Daylight Saving Time permanent. A source told BuzzFeed that the Senator was not informed about Rubio’s consent request but would have objected had he known. “No comment,” was Cotton’s repeated response when BuzzFeed asked him about it.

McLeod concluded his report by noting that this procedural quirk did have the potential for abuse, like if Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) wanted to pop into the Senate when no Republicans were around and use unanimous consent to pass the Green New Deal, or Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to repeal Obamacare while the Democrats are eating lunch.

Besides the fact that such a bill would still have to pass the House and be signed into law by the President, Senators have major incentives to discourage such shenanigans, McLeod pointed out, because that would essentially require both parties to assign a Senator to sit in the Senate chamber at all times. “That’s a babysitting duty no one wants to be stuck with, so both sides agree to play nice.”

We suspect that some Senate staffers, groggy from their sleep schedules disrupted a few days prior, may have decided that a bill finally ending this clock-mangling madness was a “minor” issue that didn’t really need their bosses’ intervention. Or perhaps Senators were considering the sobering context of the constant news reports on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and just didn’t want to be seen causing a kerfuffle over an issue with decidedly lower stakes.

Either way, it’s in the hands of the House now. If it passes and President Joe Biden signs the bill, it will become effective November 2023 and make Daylight Saving Time permanent, meaning the last time Americans will have to adjust their clocks will be March 2023.

This article has been updated to correct the effective date of the bill.