People don't vote for civil servants their loyality is not with the public but themselves. Congress's loyality is with donors and/or leader's who's loyality is with donors.

Nothing will work when the courts decide giving money is speech and now protected. Super pacs have unlimited spending and shield donors.

It's hard to change. You need a new supreme court or amendment to remove super pacs then you need to convince the people who got in power by having more money to limit donations to an amount an average American can afford. Then you need laws to fix gerrymandering or possible an amendment. Then you need radical laws to deal with immigration vote buy which mlght involve rules not allowing people not born in the country from voting.

And then we will realize that people with more money will actually need more power because they have bigger needs. So they will start buying people through convert ways (media ownership, ai filtered data, ...) and we'll have more disinformation. Maybe this is the best democracy can offer.