On 29 July 2024, eligible retirees in Palau lined up to collect $480 social-assistance cheques funded through a supplemental budget. A local newspaper’s dated photo caption recorded a line extending from the Chamayong Cultural Center toward Mindzenty High School until about 9:30 a.m. Public assistance is often described as a figure in a budget, but for a recipient it becomes a concrete event: arriving, taking a place and receiving the payment in turn. The line along the road showed the final distance between a government appropriation and the everyday lives it was intended to support.