1976

1977 (three times)

1978

1979

1981

1982 (twice)

1983

1984 (twice)

1986

1987

1990

1995

1996

And now 2013 joins the list of years since the mid-1970s in which the federal government has been shut down due to disagreements over funding issues. You probably remember the two shutdowns of the mid-1990s, but the list also includes:

• A 10-day partial shutdown in 1976, when the Democratic-controlled Congress fought with President Ford over funding for two federal departments.
• Two shutdowns, lasting a total of 20 days, in 1977 over a dispute between the House and Senate -- both controlled by Democrats -- regarding the cases in which federal money could be used to pay for abortions via Medicaid. (Should this be dubbed, in retrospect, the Democrats' Civil War on Women?)
• An 18-day shutdown in 1978 after President Carter vetoed appropriations bills passed by the Democratic-controlled Congress.
• An 11-day shutdown in 1979 when the Hosue and the Senate, both controlled by Democrats, couldn't agree on whether to give themselves (and some senior civil servants) a pay raise. (The Medicaid abortion funding issue from two years earlier also came into play.)
• A tw0-day shutdown in 1981 ... and a three-day shutdown in 1983 ... and a one-day shutdown in 1986 ... when the Democratic-controlled House fought President Reagan and the GOP-controlled Senate over domestic and military spending.

So there have been times when Democrats fought Democrats. And there have been times when House Democrats alone -- "one party, in one house of Congress, in one branch of government," as President Obama so dismissively described House Republicans on Monday -- held up the budget process and shut down the government over a fight with a Senate and White House controlled by Republicans.

To dismiss the shutdown that began today as substantively different from these other examples is pure spin. The earlier examples also involved disputes over funding for programs and agencies that were just as legally legitimate as Obamacare.

Now, all that said, I am not at all sure House Republicans will extract any concessions from Obama and Senate Democrats because of this shutdown. And they may well pay a price at the polls next year because of their tactics. History tells us the lawmakers holding out in the above examples didn't always get their way and sometimes faced electoral consequences (though I suspect a short-lived shutdown this year wouldn't be a decisive factor in the 2014 midterms).

But the president's familiar rhetoric about this being such an extraordinary action, and his supporters' tired outrage about GOP "extremists" and "hostage takers" and so on, simply don't hold up against the history of the past four decades. Our system is designed for disagreement, and no one should be shocked when some disagreements linger beyond deadlines for action.