FDR forced people to give up all their gold assets at a fixed rate, under threat of imprisonment for a decade. He then proceeded to nearly double the declared exhange rate up once the government had confiscated everybody's gold.
All done by executive order. Makes basically all modern EOs look pretty innocuous by comparison.
That said I actually agree and would love to see a sharp reduction in executive power, especially as it comes to using the military. If we're going to go bombing places, that should require a declaration of war from Congress. And 'emergency' powers should not be enabled for decades on end.