How common — and lengthy — are government shutdowns?  There have been 20 “funding gaps” since Congress introduced the modern budget process in 1976, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB). But many of those were only a few days long: Since 1981, there have been 10 funding gaps of three days or fewer — mostly over a weekend when the impact to government operations was relatively minimal. Only a handful of shutdowns have lasted more than two weeks — and they were all within the last 30 years.