In all likelihood, you’ve never heard of the Antideficiency Act. But it’s that obscure 1884 law that has led to what has become an almost annual event — the government shutdown.
The Antideficiency Act, passed under the Chester Arthur (remember him?) presidential administration, prevents federal agencies, its officers and employees from spending funds they don’t have or which haven’t been appropriated by law.
A predecessor of that law was enacted in 1870 because federal agencies, including the military during the recently ended Civil War, would intentionally run out of money, obligating Congress to provide funding in order that contracts not be breached.
The Antideficiency law was amended from time to time, and occasionally departments ran out of money because an appropriation had expired, and the next one had not yet been enacted. But employees just kept working because it was inevitable the department would get funded.
When such funding gaps began to get caught up in issues like abortion and school integration in the mid- to late-1970s, U.S. Rep. Gladys Noon Spellman (remember her?), D-Maryland, wondered if the lapses in funding were a violation of the Antideficiency Act. How she knew about the law or whether she made the United States Code her light bedtime reading is not clear.