Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have announced plenty of controversial proposals for their Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), but there are some that are managing to gather bipartisan support. Case in point? The fate of daylight saving time.
Among the many changes the two are proposing for cutting government spending, one of the most recent is the end of the spring and autumnal time changes. Musk got the ball rolling last week on X, linking to another user’s poll and commenting, “Looks like the people want to abolish the annoying time changes!” Ramaswamy, within minutes, replied, saying “It’s inefficient & easy to change.” Also weighing in, backing the proposal, were Donald Trump Jr. and actor Kevin Sorbo (both in favor of ending the clock-changing ritual).
The poll has received roughly 38,000 votes, with over 81% of respondents looking to get rid of the time change.
It’s possible Musk and Ramaswamy were just tossing out ideas, but Musk upped the stakes later that day, telling Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), again via X, that he wanted to end time changes.
Assuming Musk and Ramaswamy are planning to make this a priority for DOGE, there are (as you might expect) a few hurdles that stand in their way.
DOGE does not have any direct power when it comes to affecting any sort of change in government spending. The new division, however, will work with the White House Office of Management and Budget to implement the recommendations of Musk and Ramaswamy. And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene will chair a new Congressional subcommittee aimed at eliminating government waste, which will work with DOGE.
Why it’s so hard to get rid of daylight saving time
While there have been bipartisan efforts to make daylight saving time permanent and end the changing of clocks, those have always fallen short. The most recent came earlier this year, but the one that made the most progress was a 2022 bill that was passed by the Senate, which would have made daylight saving time permanent starting in 2023. The bill died in the House, though, never coming to a vote.
Over the past nine years, roughly 30 states have introduced their own legislation to end the time changes, but few have enacted them, as doing so could make interstate travel confusing. Only Arizona and Hawaii have done away with the time change, both choosing to observe standard time year-round.
The bigger question, though, is which of the two time options should be kept if Washington does decide to get rid of time changes: daylight saving or standard? Most of the people responding to the X thread were supportive of keeping daylight saving year-round, as it would give people more hours of daylight in the evening hours, letting kids play outside or adults take care of things that often get pushed to the weekend.
Doing so, though, would penalize the center states, where sunrises in the winter wouldn’t take place until as late as 9 a.m., meaning school children would have to board their buses in the dark. And researchers have found daylight saving has negative health effects, including an increase in heart attacks from a combination of chronic sleep deprivation and “circadian misalignment.”
Should Musk and Ramaswamy make the push to end time changes, they’re likely to have support from Trump. He voiced his support for the idea more than five years ago, tweeting “Making Daylight Saving Time permanent is O.K. with me!”
Time changes have been a part of American life for the better part of a century. The Standard Time Act was passed in 1918, as a wartime measure to save energy during World War I. In 1974, lawmakers agreed to make daylight saving time permanent, ending bi-annual clock changes. Within 10 months, though, that decision was reversed after a flood of complaints came in from people who hated waking up and commuting to work in the dark—and as reports emerged of school children being hit and killed by cars.
The New York Times, during that period, declared it “the Second Dark Age.”
History is quickly forgotten, though. So the inconvenience of changing clocks has once again put the question of time change in the spotlight—and the decision could rest in the hands of two people eager to bring change (seemingly any kind of change) to the country.