You can't just get a better national team with money. The players have to be American citizens, so you can't do much recruiting. So the players have to be 'created' at home, and that's not happening.
The USSA announced a few years ago a program to win the World Cup by such-and-such year (I cannot remember the goal)
But they don't pay any attention to college soccer. US colleges are recruiting HUGE numbers of foreign players (in my son's NCAA Div. II region, there's one team with 25 foreign players on a roster of 27, or in the NAIA, look at Lindsey Wilson, where last time I looked, they had one American on the V roster, and I'm told they have many foreigners on the JV roster as well.
When parents look at this with an idea towards their kids playing in college, they see that the scholarships are going to foreigners. It's just one more reason to stick with the 'traditional' American sports.
We also HAVE to find a way to generate pickup games where kids play by themselves without coaching. A lot of important aspects of the game can't be coached, they have to come from within as a result of free play. Pele learned to play in the street in bare feet and with a ball made of rags. And he learned to really love the game.
Is it D2 and D3 that have no caps on the number of foreign players? It seems these teams are loaded with every nationality except American.
I don't necessarily disagree, but I'm sure you can see the humor (especially on this site) in not being able to offer passports to good footballers while a stream of unskilled illiterate dolts pours into the country on a daily basis.
The rules (I use the term loosely) most foreign FAs use to establish eligibility for international competitions could be used here if we chose to get down and dirty. Witness Chris Burchill playing for T&T. Many Ireland players have been more or less British. Even Klose for Germany is Polish-born.