While the House overwhelmingly supported passage of a bill to make daylight saving time permanent, the Senate isn’t expected to take it up quickly.
Although the Senate passed similar legislation by unanimous consent in 2022, a number of senators actually oppose making daylight saving time permanent.
A senior Capitol Hill aide points out that Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., opposes the bill, saying, “Sen. Cotton has the same concerns he’s had for years about this proposal, but he is far from alone.”
The aide pointed out that Sens. John Thune, R-S.D., Roger Wicker, R-Miss., Deb Fischer, R-Neb., Jerry Moran, R-Kan., Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, Ted Budd, R-N.C., Tim Sheehy, R-Mont., Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., Gary Peters, D-Mich., Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., and Lisa Blunt-Rochester, D-Del., all voted against making daylight saving time permanent in the Senate Commerce Committee in 2025.
A leadership aide says that Cotton did not object to the bill passing unanimously in 2022 because of a miscommunication, with Cotton thinking someone else would be there to object.
Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R_Wyo., told reporters yesterday that the bill cannot pass by unanimous consent in the Senate this time around, noting that support for the bill “depends on where you’re living in the country and the impact would be in your own home state, so it’s not as simple as what one state might like.”
Asked this morning about how he feels about the House bill, Thune, the Senate majority leader, told NBC News, “I think the main concern is that there’s optionality for states, and my understanding is that’s in the House bill.”
“I just don’t think we want a mandate, and that was tried once before and repealed, but we’re looking at it,” Thune said, “You know, the House had a big vote. There’s a lot of interest in it from members on our side over here, some for, some against. But we’ll see.”
Thune noted that he voted against the bill in the Commerce Committee, and said it “remains to be seen” if the bill has the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster in the Senate, saying, “That’s not an issue that we’ve really probed much yet.”
Part of the issue is that without unanimous consent it would take days of procedural hurdles to pass the bill, and floor time is particularly hard to come by when other nominees and bills are a higher priority.
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