[tz] United States Senate reintroduced Sunshine Protection Act, enabling Permanent DST

[John Hawkinson]

Randal L. Schwartz via tz <tz at iana.org> wrote on Tue, 23 Mar 2021
at 00:43:01 EDT in <86tup2a3ai.fsf at red.stonehenge.com>:

> There's gonna be a lot of people missing their flights someday soon. :)

Since there may be confusion on this point, and humor doesn't always carry well in email, I think it's worth emphasizing:

Introduction of a bill doesn't necessarily mean that a law is especially likely to arise from it. It can range anywhere on a proverbial scale of 1 to 10 from 1 being "meaningless political posturing" to 10 being "virtually certain to pass." I would gues this bill is about a 2 or 3 on that scale.

It's certainly something we should be aware of, but I doubt it is likely to come to fruition any time soon.

(On the other hand, trying to predict what legislators will do is often unwise. They have great power that can be used in unexpected ways and they can pass bills far faster than their median time if they choose to do so.)

The Senate version of this bill is S.623, but its text has not yet been formally submitted:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/623

This House version of the bill has been assigned number H.R.69 and is probably best tracked at https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/69/actions
although I understand
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/hr69
is quite popular.

Amusing quote from the latter:
Prognosis:  1% chance of being enacted according to Skopos Labs
This bill has a 1% chance of being enacted.
Factors considered:
  The bill's primary sponsor is a Republican. The bill is assigned to the House Energy and Commerce committee. The bill's primary subject is Science, technology, communications.
(Factors are based on correlations which may not indicate causation.)

--
jhawk at alum.mit.edu
John Hawkinson