The problems are not fundamentally of local scope. Consider for example the coal mining towns that have been left in a state of ruin by the shift away from coal. There is no local prosperity to fund local aid there.
Being that this is too difficult a logistical problem, we instead propose as a solution raising many times that amount of money in campaign donations, lobbying, and volunteer hours to convince a significantly larger group of (the exact same) people (who we don't think will give a dollar or ten to the same cause) to spend at least that much in gas and time to get up and go vote for specific or general measures to care for these people instead.
Do you see the issues with this logic?