What was the New Deal, and what were three of its programs that helped employ or protect Americans?Which of its program do we still rely on today?

It is also important to remember the size and scope of the New Deal.  It was an immense, several year long effort to right our economic ship.

When FDR was elected in 1932, he immediately called together his "Brain Trust" - business leaders and economists - to come up with a plan for saving the US economy from the Great Depression.  As a politician he then packaged their ideas and explained it to the public and Congress as The New Deal.  He took complex ideas and expressed them in common, everyday language, which was reassuring to Americans.

Three programs in addition to the ones listed above that we still use today include:

The Tennessee Valley Authority, which built a series of hydroelectric dams in the Tennessee River Valley, providing thousands of jobs, flood and irrigation control and cheap electricity.

The FDIC - An insurance program for banks whereby a citizen's deposits in that bank are insured.  If the bank goes under, you get your money back.  This gave us confidence in the system, enough so that we re-deposited our cash back into banks.  We recently used the FDIC extensively during the 2008 - 2009 banking crisis.

The REA - Responsible for the construction of hundreds of smaller hydro dams in rural areas that provided electricity to the countryside in places that had never had it before.  The REA in my town is still there, still providing jobs and cheap, reliable electricity.