Political Quotes

“Madam President, as the day goes on, I look forward to others who will be coming to the floor here in a moment. You will see it is an eclectic collection of Members of the U.S. Senate in favor of what we have just done here in the Senate, and that is to pass a bill to make daylight saving time permanent. Just this past weekend, we all went through that biannual ritual of changing the clock back and forth and the disruption that comes with it. And one has to ask themselves after a while: Why do we keep doing it? Why are we doing this? This really began back in 1918 as a practice that was supposed to save energy, and since then we have adjusted it. Today, daylight saving time, which started out as 6 months, was extended to 8 months in 2005, clearly showing you what people's preference was. So we are doing this back-and-forth of clock-changing for about 16 weeks of standard time a year. Now, I think the majority of the American people's preference is just to stop the back-and-forth changing. But beyond that, I think their preference is, certainly, at least based on today's vote and what we have heard, is to make daylight saving time permanent. I will just tell you a couple of the reasons why I think that is important. There is some strong science behind it that is now showing and making people aware of the harm that clock-switching has. We see an increase in heart attacks and car accidents and pedestrian accidents in the week that follow the changes.…”