The deficit hawks have routinely included legislation that included automatic ways to reduce the US deficit to be implemented at a future point in time, when hopefully Congress has sorted out whether or not such a thing is actually desirable. It's essentially a budget Sword of Damocles.

Of course, Congressional budget negotiations have been an unproductive circus show for a while, so this never actually happened and the thing that was never actually intended to go in place went in effect. With the current razor-thin majority in the House constantly getting derailed over budget negotiations, this is unlikely to resolve any time soon.