RFK Stadium Bill Making Quiet Progress in Congress

The RFK Stadium bill that would make D.C. an option for a new Commanders stadium is inching closer to passage. 

The lobbying effort by the NFL, the Commanders, D.C. officials, and even members of Congress has focused on House Speaker Mike Johnson. Proponents have pushed the Louisiana Republican to include the RFK Stadium bill in the continuing resolution to fund the government before the Dec. 20 shutdown deadline. 

Those negotiations are far along and confidence is high Johnson will include the bill in the continuing resolution (CR), two sources with knowledge of the discussions told Front Office Sports. On Thursday, the RFK Stadium bill was included in the latest version of the CR, the sources said. The final version of the CR is expected by Monday. 

Attaching the RFK bill to the federal spending continuing resolution would resolve the opposition from Maryland senators Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen. That’s because the only way to amend a continuing resolution on the Senate side is to require another House vote. And Cardin and Van Hollen—and other Senate Democrats—are unlikely to be the cause of the first shutdown since 2019 over the stadium bill, one of the sources said. The CR would temporarily fund the government into early 2025.

“Hopefully we’ll get it on the CR,” Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.), the chair of the House Oversight Committee where the bill originated, told The Washington Times. “If it’s not on the CR, then we’re going to have to start all over in the next Congress. And I don’t know how much longer he’s willing to wait on Congress to act.”

The stadium bill gives D.C. control of the 174 acres that sit under the old RFK Stadium—where the team played for decades before it relocated to Landover, Md., in 1996—via a 99-year lease for the federally controlled land. Beyond a football stadium, D.C. would be able to utilize the land for housing and other development. 

The bill passed the House by an overwhelming margin in February and exited a Senate committee last month. With basically no chance of passing it as a stand-alone bill in the Senate, attention was turned back to the House to bundle it with the CR, the two sources said. 

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and Commanders majority owner Josh Harris, along with others in the team’s ownership group, have visited Capitol Hill in recent weeks to speak in support of the legislation. 

“We’ve had conversations with both parties in the House and the Senate, including the leadership,” Goodell said from the NFL winter meetings outside Dallas on Wednesday. “I think there’s bipartisan support for this. They are obviously going through the final stages of their  session and we expect and hope it will be put for a vote.”

Despite the CR route blunting what the two Maryland senators can do to halt the bill, it’s expected the state will get some assurances about the future use of the roughly 200 acres under and around Northwest Stadium if the Commanders move to D.C. or Virginia. The Commanders own both the land and stadium, and they have targeted 2030 for the opening of a new stadium.  

The conversations between Cardin and Van Hollen and the Commanders remain ongoing, a Senate source said. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had said both had to be on board before any legislation with the RFK Stadium bill attached would move forward in the Senate. However, that was before it became known that Johnson was open to rolling it into the CR. 

A Commanders spokesperson did not provide comment before publication.