Both Democrats and Republicans agreed to the sequester in 2011 as part of a bill to raise the US debt ceiling - the legallimit the government can borrow.
The cuts were created in negotiations over a 2011 bill that raised the US debt ceiling, the legallimit that America is allowed to borrow to fund its budget deficit.
Indeed, if the small government establishment truly believed its voluminous columns about how small government and free markets are the path to prosperity, then it would have recommended that the GOP sit on its hands and maintain a legal barrier to increased spending which is itself the debtlimit.