President Donald Trump has turned an unlikely issue into one of his most personal legislative priorities — and he is spending real political capital to make it happen, according to a report Friday.
The 79-year-old has been making direct phone calls to Republican lawmakers, lobbying them to support the so-called Sunshine Protection Act, which would make daylight saving time permanent across the country, reported Politico.
“He’s a big fan of it,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), who got a call from the president on the issue. “He said, ‘Do you still think this is a good idea?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I do, I think it’s a great idea.’”
The effort scored an early victory last month when the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 48-1 to insert a permanent daylight saving time amendment into a surface transportation bill. Trump celebrated on social media, calling it a "very nice WIN for the Republican Party."
Whether that win survives contact with the full House and Senate is another matter entirely.
Republican majorities in both chambers are thin, and opposition is already forming. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who blocked a similar measure on the Senate floor last October, has not indicated he has changed his position, and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee with jurisdiction over the bill, said plainly, "I've already heard from people over here who don't like it."
The broader transportation bill will also require Democratic support to pass, and even Democrats who voted for the amendment in committee are hedging. Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL) said her constituents are focused on grocery prices and healthcare costs, not clock-changing. The daylight saving time provision, she added dryly, "probably should have been debated in the light of day."
What makes the president's push unusual is not the policy itself — bipartisan efforts to resolve the daylight saving time debate have circulated for years without success — but the intensity of his personal engagement.
Senior White House officials describe it as a genuine priority, grounded in arguments about public health, economic disruption and the particular misery of resetting a toddler's sleep schedule twice a year.
“The overall thrust of the policy is just to stop dealing with the health issues and the various pieces of economic dislocation that occur when we have to change our clocks, and if you’re a parent, the absolute holy hell of having to adjust your children’s internal clocks with the changing of the time, so we think it’s a win-win-win,” said a senior White House official.
“Win for the president, win for the American people, and a win for everybody who has to go through this really inconvenient process," that official said. "We’re going to keep working the bill hard.”