Shortly after the vote to raise the debt ceiling, I caught up with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., briefly to ask him about an issue I’ve raised in this space: will the negotiated deal force Republicans to choose between raising taxes and cutting defense.

As I noted, the deal sets up a joint Congressional committee to find at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction. And any amount it falls short of that triggers automatic equal cuts in defense and Medicare. So if the Democrats on the committee insist on raising taxes, would Republicans have to either accept those higher taxes, or trigger the defense spending cuts?