As Senator, Wagner was a leader of the New Deal Coalition putting special emphasis on supporting the labor movement. He was a close associate and strong supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He sponsored three major laws: the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, the Social Security Act of 1935, and the Housing Act of 1937. Wagner resigned from the Senate in 1949 due to ill health, and died in 1953. His son Robert F. Wagner Jr. was mayor of New York from 1954 through 1965.