Today, the Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians will face off in game one of the World Series, highlighting 108- and 68-year droughts, respectively, since either claimed a title.
The world has changed a lot since the Cubs lost to the Detroit Tigers in 1945 and the Indians defeated the Boston Braves in 1948. That got us wondering what Congress was up to way back then. Here’s what we found:
The Last Time the Cubs Competed for a Title: 1945
World War II was drawing to a close, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt passed away in April of that year, paving the way for Harry Truman to be sworn in as president.
In March, around the time the Cubs were in Spring Training, Congress passed legislation known as the McCarran-Ferguson Act which exempted the insurance industry from federal regulation and left it up to the states. In 2010, when the House was under Democratic control, it voted to repeal parts of the McCarran-Ferguson Act that related to health insurance, but it didn’t pass the Senate and no subsequent votes occurred.
Congress also passed two major pieces of legislation related to the global economy, enacting both the Bretton Woods Agreement Act and the Export-Import Bank Act at the end of July. The Bretton Woods Agreement required the U.S., Canada, Western Europe, Australia, and Japan to adopt monetary policies that tied their national currency to the gold standard to stabilize international exchange rates. The Export-Import Bank helps finance and insure overseas exports for U.S. companies, and it has been the subject of recent attempts to eliminate or reform it.
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© 2016 by Countable.us. The article was written by Eric Revell, and was republished with permission from Countable.us.
Photo Credit: Daniel Padavona / shutterstock.com