"The Forgotten Legacy of the New Deal: Fiscal Conservatism and the Roosevelt Administration, 1933-1938" by Julian E. Zelizer, in Presidential Studies Quarterly (June 2000), Center for Presidential Studies, Texas A&M Univ., College Station, TX 77843–4349.
When President Bill Clinton embraced taking office in 1993, he was not betraying the cause of deficit reduction shortly after the tradition of New Deal liberalism but adhering to one of its "most important, yet least appreciated, legacies," argues Zelizer, a historian at the State University of New York at Albany.
Though New Deal historians usually deemphasize it, fiscal conservatism—i.e., "an agenda of balanced budgets, private capital investment, minimal government debt, stable currency, low inflation, and high savings"—was "a key component of the New Deal," he says. President Franklin D. Roosevelt knew that investors and businessmen, mainstream economists, and most of the voting public favored it. And he did himself, at least in principle.