In today’s highly fractured world, it’s not often that lawmakers from the two parties agree on anything — which makes it all the more amazing that a Republican and a Democrat are working together to smack down the National Football League.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) have co-sponsored a bill that would strip any taxpayer funding for professional sports teams for building their massive arenas. The proposal, first put forward in June, is gaining steam on Capitol Hill after NFL players began kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality (or something).

“Professional sports teams generate billions of dollars in revenue,” Booker said in a June 13 statement. “There’s no reason why we should give these multimillion-dollar businesses a federal tax break to build new stadiums. It’s not fair to finance these expensive projects on the backs of taxpayers, especially when wealthy teams end up reaping most of the benefits.”

Said Lankford: “The federal government is responsible for a lot of important functions, but financing sports stadiums for multi-million – sometimes billion – dollar franchises is definitely not one of them. Using billions of federal taxpayer dollars for the subsidization of private stadiums when we have real infrastructure needs in our country is not a good way to prioritize a limited amount of funds.”

A spokesman from Lankford’s office told The Daily Caller on Sunday that “in the last four weeks interest in the bill has picked up since both members proposed it four months ago.”

The two senators said that since 2000, 36 professional sports stadiums have been constructed or revamped under financing provided by federal tax-exempt municipal bonds, costing taxpayers over $3.2 billion. While sports team argue that stadium construction is for the good of the community, the senators say “there is no statistically significant positive correlation between sports facility construction and economic development.”

The true cost is more like $7 billion, reported Watchdog.org. “Overall, taxpayers have spent nearly $3 billion on the 16 stadiums that will host NFL games during the season’s opening weekend. And over the past couple of decades, we’ve given NFL teams nearly $7 billion total in aid for their stadiums.”

The New England Patriots built the impressive Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Mass., with $72 million in taxpayer cash. The Pittsburgh Steelers tapped taxpayers for $171.6 million, while tyhe Indianapolis Colts grabbed $619 million in taxpayer subsidies.

“Players on the Baltimore Ravens and Jacksonville Jaguars, all who can potentially benefit from taxpayer dollars at the local, state and federal levels, followed the lead of former San Francisco 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick Sunday. They kneeled during the national anthem at a game against each other in London. Other teams stayed in their locker rooms for the anthem,” the Caller reported.

Denver Broncos outside linebacker Von Miller effectively lost an endorsement deal with Phil Long Ford after he took a knee during the playing of our national anthem before Sunday’s kickoff against the Buffalo Bills.

According to a spokesman from the Phil Long Dealership, the linebacker was “in the middle of contract renewal” with the company before the NFL star chose to take a knee this weekend. Considering Miller’s act, the patriotic, veteran-supporting brand chose to end their partnership.

“We are evaluating the events of the weekend. It is important to state that we haven’t fired Von. We are in the middle of contract renewal and this weekend’s events remind us that sometimes we feel that we best represent ourselves. We support Von and his first amendment rights, we know Von and he’s a good person. He donated a police car to his hometown police dept. All that notwithstanding when we bring in celebrities to represent us we run the risk of being misrepresented,” said the Phil Long Ford spokesman.

“We, like millions of Americans are concerned and will respond consistently with our values as a proud American company founded by a war hero (Phil Long),” he continued. “While we can’t control the actions of others we can be responsible for how we support our nation and community. That is why, years ago, our principal owner, Jay Cimino, founded the Mount Carmel Veteran’s Service center, and is supported by all Phil Long Dealerships. We support this cause not just with our words, but financially as well, and it is serving hundreds of veterans in need right here in Colorado. This would be a great time for our community to show support for our military community by supporting this cause or others that continue to serve them after they serve us.”

Miller said he took a knee in response to President Donald Trump’s recent remarks about the Kaepernick-like protest. During a rally for Alabama Senate candidate Luther Strange, the president remarked that it would be great if NFL owners would fire the “son of a b****” players who refuse to stand during the anthem.

“Me and my teammates, we felt like President Trump’s speech was an assault on our most cherished right, freedom of speech,” explained Miller on Sunday. “Collectively, we felt like we had to do something for this game, if not any other game — if not in the past, in the future — at this moment in time, we felt like, as a team, we had to do something. We couldn’t just let things go. I have a huge respect for the military, our protective services and everything. I’ve been to Afghanistan, I’ve met real-life superheroes. It wasn’t any disrespect to them, it was for our brothers that have been attacked for things that they do during the game, and I felt like I had to join them on it.”

The NFL’s ratings dropped after President Trump’s remarks on the protest, according to Business Insider.

When the Mizzou football team chose to embrace the racial protests gripping the campus in November 2015, The New York Times cheered the players for “lending heft” to the activists’ cause. Two years later, the Times had to admit that all the hysteria and the administration’s decision to cave to it turned out to be exactly what many predicted it would be: an absolute “disaster” for the university. Freshmen enrollment dropped a stunning 35%, forcing the school to shut down seven dorms and lay off over 400 employees. As for the football team, which saw millions in donations disappear overnight, well, it’s a full-fledged dumpster fire.

Following a brutal 2016 season, the Mizzou Tigers have started off 2017 by getting torched by three of their four opponents. Mizzou’s only win so far is over the miserable Missouri State Bears (which is also currently 1-3). Against the three Power Five conference teams they’ve played so far, the Tigers have been outscored by a total of 81 points. They lost 31-13 to middling South Carolina, were hammered 35-3 by mediocre Purdue, and were annihilated 51-14 by an offensively-challenged Auburn.

In the 2016, the year after letting the racial protests eclipse football, Mizzou had an abysmal season. They didn’t even come close to getting a bowl berth, going just 4 and 8 and winning a grand total of two SEC games. Their only other two wins came against Delaware State and Eastern Michigan.

As the once cheerleading Times was forced to acknowledge in July, the university that really got the campus racial protest movement going is now a lesson in what happens when an administration allows social justice activists to lay siege to an institution.

In the fall of 2015, a grassy quadrangle at the center of the University of Missouri became known nationwide as the command center of an escalating protest.

Students complaining of official inaction in the face of racial bigotry joined forces with a graduate student on a hunger strike. Within weeks, with the aid of the football team, they had forced the university system president and the campus chancellor to resign.

It was a moment of triumph for the protesting students. But it has been a disaster for the university.

While the Tigers’ failing football team might be one of the more glaring of the consequences, the real story is the 180-degree reversal of the university’s once upward trend. The 35% decrease in freshmen enrollment over the last two years is even more devastating in light of the growth the university was experiencing before the protests. And the administration itself has been forced to admit that the fallout from the campus hysteria is what’s driving their decline.

“The university administration acknowledges that the main reason [for the sharp decline in enrollment] is a backlash from the events of 2015, as the campus has been shunned by students and families put off by, depending on their viewpoint, a culture of racism or one where protesters run amok,” the Times reports.

“The general consensus was that it was because of the aftermath of what happened in November 2015,” admitted the new system president Mun Choi. “There were students from both in state and out of state that just did not apply, or those who did apply but decided not to attend.”

Mizzou proved to be the flashpoint of what would become a wave of racial protests sweeping campuses over the next few months and years, with social justice activists emboldened by Mizzou’s president and chancellor resigning amid unfounded accusations of “racism” and “insensitivity.” And while the administration bent over backwards to appease the protesters, enrollment numbers show that the biggest decline came among minorities:

Students of all races have shunned Missouri, but the drop in freshman enrollment last fall was strikingly higher among blacks, at 42%, than among whites, at 21%. (A racial breakdown was not yet available for this fall’s freshman class.)

Black students were already a small minority. They made up 10% of the freshman class in 2012, a proportion that fell to just 6% last fall.

Meanwhile, the seven dorms the university can no longer fill with students are now being converted into makeshift hotel rooms for the fans still willing to show up to the games. “We had a total loss of about $5 million, so you’re talking zero (dollars) if we do nothing versus $60,000 (three games in) — of course it’s worth it,” said Mizzou spokesman Christian Basi about the dorm room rental program. But if the team keeps playing like it has over the last two seasons, the school shouldn’t get its hopes up about making much off of that desperate venture.

While Mizzou suffers for its handling of social justice activists, the NFL has now fully embraced the national anthem protest “movement.” Will the league fare like the Tigers? Declining ratings and recent polls on the issue suggest it just might.