Societally we need to fix politics. There are some really easy things we can go after first in fact. To start with removing monied interests from politics by passing laws to counteract citizen's united would help, supporting proportional representation to invalidate any efforts to gerrymander maps and allow the expression of minority opinions would also help and, the big bad one, by adopting proportional representation (either via STV or some sort of mixed member balance) we could destroy America's two party system, this would discourage negative campaigning and ideally let in collation governance which is much more resistant to corruption.

After all that we could regroup and discuss how to ensure people in need get an appropriate amount of vital services.