Leadership Quote by Corrine Brown

The line lands like a budget memo disguised as a moral indictment: we are not just skipping a nice-to-have infrastructure project, we are choosing a worse, more expensive status quo. Corrine Brown’s “also” is doing a lot of work. It implies a larger catalog of neglect, with high-speed rail treated as the most obvious exhibit in a case against America’s transportation priorities.

Her intent is pragmatic but pointed. By pairing “ignoring” with “underfunding,” Brown frames the problem as both cultural and fiscal: policymakers don’t merely fail to appropriate dollars; they fail to take the idea seriously. “One of the best ways” is a politician’s soft absolutism - broad enough to invite coalition, firm enough to shame skeptics who treat rail as utopian or foreign.

The subtext is a critique of the highway-first bargain that has dominated U.S. planning for decades, where congestion is managed by pouring more concrete instead of changing the mode. Brown repositions high-speed rail from a climate-friendly luxury into a congestion solution for drivers - a strategic rhetorical pivot in a country where the car is still the default identity and expectation. “Move citizens” also hints at equity: transportation as a public good, not merely a private purchase.

Contextually, her argument sits inside recurring American bursts of rail ambition - the post-2008 stimulus era, periodic federal proposals, and ongoing fights over whether rail is “boondoggle” or backbone. She’s selling a national modernization story, but with the sharp edge of accountability: if highways are failing, it’s because we keep funding the past.