Two hundred and forty thousand Department of Homeland Security employees woke up without a paycheck this week, but the Senate has found a way to keep the lights on in the ballroom. A new $1 billion infrastructure project for a luxury Secret Service facility at the White House is moving forward despite the federal default.

The contrast is almost too perfect for a writer like Wolfe to imagine. While federal agents in Minneapolis and the Southwest are being told to work for free, the Gilded Arch phase of governance is officially underway in the capital.

According to the World History record, the project includes high-end security upgrades disguised as neoclassical monumentalism. It is a spectacular administrative windfall for the architects and a devastating blow for the 240,000 families wondering how to pay for groceries.

This column notes that the state has stopped even pretending to function for the people. It has transitioned into a pure aesthetic project—a hollow state with a very expensive interior designer.

We are watching the permanent enclosure of the public welfare state. If you can’t pay the border cops, at least you can ensure the crystal chandeliers at the next state dinner are properly polished.

In the new Washington, national security is a Veblen good. If you have to ask how much it costs to keep the DHS running, you clearly aren't the kind of person the ballroom was built for.