Empowering the Bureaucrats: The Case of the Debt Limit

Justice Scalia recently dinged Congress for delegating power to bureaucrats.  I just stumbled (via Tyler Cowen) on the CRS study of the statutory debt limit.  It includes this brief history:

Before World War I, Congress often authorized borrowing for specified purposes, such as the
construction of the Panama Canal.28 Congress also often specified which types of financial
instruments Treasury could employ, and specified or limited interest rates, maturities, and details
of when bonds could be redeemed. In other cases, especially in time of war, Congress provided
the Treasury with discretion, subject to broad limits, to choose debt instruments.

 So something which we think nothing of, the regular rolling over of the national debt, the allocating among bills, notes, and bonds, all that is something Congress once reserved for itself.