The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. The acceptance of Keynes analysis and theory by some economists was just a small step in becoming public policy. New Deal, domestic program of the administration of U.S. Pres. It was the economic necessity of the population, not that of the economy, that inspired social worker Hopkins’ decision. To them, liberalism seemed permissive. Few disagree though that his response to the worst depression in American history is the defining feature of his presidency. The American people may need to prepare themselves for another shock to the body politic. The use of deficit budgets by the federal government to perform its role in preventing employment had been accepted not just by the public but also by the political elites across the political spectrum. It is only after the disastrous tax cuts of 1937-8 that caused a further recession, that Roosevelt was more amenable to the idea of deficit budgets as a tool to economic recovery. Others view him as a devious and unprincipled compromiser, a broker president who fragmented the national polity as he built electoral coalitions around self-serving interest groups. Prosperity made it possible to ignore systemic inequities and injustices. The American family, more particularly its middle-class variant, thereby became the apotheosis of secular modernism. Early concerns about containing deficits made way for large spending programs only to be replaced by a sharp retrenchment in 1937, contributing to what many termed a “Roosevelt recession.” After this he adopted the theories of British economist John M. Keynes, who advocated massive government spending to stimulate depressed markets. “Keynes and the Reconstruction of Liberalism.” Encounter 52 (1979). The New Left destroyed what remained of the liberal coalition by dissolving the alliance between blacks and working-class whites whose predecessors had together championed the New Deal. 3 (Autumn 1990): 397-418. If the United States has entered upon the “brave new world” that Genovese contemplated, then the real story of recent American political history is not the so-called Reagan Revolution that sounded the deal knell of the New Deal, but the comparative irrelevance of both the Democratic and Republican parties. Work relief through programmes such as the Civil Works Association (CWA), created in November 1933 and employing 3.6 million people a month later, were formed in the majority because of humanitarian reasons not to boost demand. From New Deal to New Economics: the American Liberal response to the Recession of 1937. Even if Roosevelt had wanted to use Keynes’ theory on deficit spending, it would have needed to have public approval for the magnitude required.