An appropriation bill or running bill is a legislative motion (bill) which authorizes the government to spend money. It is a bill that sets money aside for specific spending. In most democracies, approval of the legislature is necessary for the government to spend money.
In a parliamentary system, the defeat of an appropriation bill in a parliamentary vote generally necessitates either a resignation of a government or the calling of a general election. One of the more famous examples of the defeat of a supply bill occurred in Australia in 1975, when the Senate, which was controlled by the opposition, refused to approve a package of appropriation and loan bills, prompting Governor-General Sir John Kerr to dismiss Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and appoint Malcolm Fraser as caretaker Prime Minister until the next election (where the Fraser government was elected).
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“Meantime the education of the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender poetic youth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)