Trade promotion authority isn’t a presidential power grab, its advocates say, but rather an authority dating back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt that helps secure critical trade agreements, sending deals to Congress for an up-or-down vote without amendments.
“Trade authority has a long bipartisan history, dating back to President Franklin Roosevelt,” noted Jeffrey Zients, director of the National Economic Council, in an April blog post emphasizing that Congress had renewed this authority “18 different times, under both Democratic and Republican Presidents alike.”
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/06/12/fast-track-votes-have-long-difficult-history/
Just to jump in for a moment on the “existed most of a century” idea. For whatever reason, the second amendment became subject to the whim of the judges, and anti-gun restrictions were hoisted around the country. They were wrong. Every municipality in America thought they were the Wild West and Wyatt Earp and they could post “turn over your weapons” signs when you rode into town.
And then the challenge of that thinking began and it was based on the 2nd Amendment.
The anti-gun tide has turned, in my opinion.
The point is that ‘the consensus’ was wrong. The same with ‘fast track’. There’s no good that comes from permitting the Constitution to be worse than ignored, for it to be deptively manipulated.
NAFTA was fast-tracked and it's still around.