The average age of a US Senator is 63, and the average age in the House of Representatives is 58. That means the average US Senator was 15 in January 1974, and the average Representative 10; half of them are older than that, so the majority are more than old enough to remember the debacle that was year-round Daylight Saving Time. I certainly do; it was still pitch-black when school started, and that was in Louisiana; I can only imagine how black it was in, say, North Dakota, where sunrise wouldn’t have come until well after 9 AM in January.
Of course, my brain is a bit healthier than that of the average Congresscritter, so perhaps the average politician’s memory doesn’t even extend back into the last century at all, much less to the incredibly remote year 1974. But one would presume they have staff to do the actual thinking for them (as opposed to the scheming, which most of them do much too well on their own), so there really isn’t an excuse for repeated attempts at social engineering that aren’t even tied to some kind of grift, pork, or fascist collaboration.
I’m not going to go into detail about why even regular Daylight Saving Time is a terrible idea; I’ve done it before, many others have done it before, and neither control freaks nor sun-worshipers will believe the evidence anyhow, no matter how broad the consensus. Americans especially balk at the idea that if they want extra time after work, they should simply adjust their schedules (get up an hour earlier to do chores & errands before work, etc); they much prefer the State to force everyone to do it with them whether those people want it or not. All I’ll say is this: as in 1974, most people are going to hate this by January after it takes effect. But given that the US bureaucracy has expanded dramatically in the past 50 years (and its inertia has multiplied exponentially), I’m not sanguine about us getting out of the mess Congress is about to impose upon us nearly as quickly and easily this time.
