We know the RFK bill language is in the omnibus spending bill that is hopeful to get passed sometime this week when voted on by the Senate…but when she joined Craig Hoffman on Wednesday afternoon, WaPo’s Erin Cox, who has been covering this story in-depth, is still skeptical until the vote is official.
“I have a little bit of anxiety about Congress and whether this saga actually will end and, if we'll pass the bill as drafted and deliver all the things that you just talked about,” Cox told Hoffman. “This is a deal that sounds like it was like written for a bad political drama, right? That they're gonna trade fighter jets for a football stadium and also get bridge funding, and they crammed all of this stuff into what's known as a continuing resolution, a technicality that goes through Congress that says we can't pass a whole new budget, but we're just gonna keep going with the spending plan we have on the books for a certain period of time. So, this thing was negotiated for weeks, it was complex and multi-layered, and they put out this bill that has everything, and it seems like a grand bargain that made everyone happy…and then the House Republicans were like, yeah, no thanks.”
President-elect Donald Trump, his Department of Government Efficiency advisors, and some others have now weighed in to cause this House Republican doubt, and now, here we are.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty about whether this grand bargain that has been negotiated, and includes a ton of other things, is actually going to pass,” Cox said. “Anybody in Congress who wants to get something before they leave town has tried to shove it into this bill, so it's unclear if they're actually going to pass it, or if they just decide to strip all of that stuff out and just go with a straight bill. So I have anxiety that after days and days and days of watching this deal come together, figuring out behind the scenes what all of these billionaires and governors and senators could do to make each other happy, that it all kind of goes up in flames and nothing happens.”
It’s not specific to the RFK site because of all the pork-barreling that has turned this bill into a monster, but that’s exactly the reason, it seems, why House Republicans are wary of passing such an inflated piece of legislation.
“I really felt like I was done writing about RFK, and I happen to be married to a sports writer and live not that far from RFK, so this is an issue that we talk a lot about at my home, that my neighbors and I talk about,” Cox joked. “It seems like this saga was finally gonna end, and you're kind of like, you get a cliffhanger, right? You thought you were gonna get that satisfying ending, and instead, you get a cliffhanger, and that's kind of where we are.”
So, let’s be positive and say the RFK bill passes and the land comes back under DC control – what happens next in DC city government in terms of a potential Commanders return and new stadium?
“So that is like a 90-step process, and the thing is, the politics of sports stadiums make all sorts of funny bedfellows; people get aligned when they wouldn't be on aligned on other issues,” Cox said. “We’re talking about 190 acres right on the waterfront, all of those fields and parkland and parking lots right next to a Metro station – so this is one of the hugest undeveloped tracts of waterfront property in DC. So if you can imagine, who would have interest in having a say in what happens there, and then add in money and add in power, you just end up with a huge dynamic of a complicated mess.”
We know Mayor Bowser wants the stadium along with a mixed-use entertainment/dining sector and some housing, but the residents around RFK aren’t all on board with that – and then there’s of course the question of who pays for this and how much (and how), so yes, it’s a quagmire at best even in the lightest timeline.
“In the parallel timeline where this bill clears Congress and the city gets control of the land and they get to determine the future there, in a lot of ways, that's sort of a whole new chapter in this saga of what is the city going to offer,” Cox said. “How are they going to get them on board? How are all of the councilmen gonna agree? How are all the people who live in the neighborhood agree? So it's kind of the beginning of the next chapter.”
Listen to Cox’s entire call-in above, as she gives some intel on some of the neighborhood pushback to development at RFK, how Maryland and Virginia fit into the equation, and more.