Debt ceiling showdown: Biden and congressional leaders to meet as McCarthy pushes for faster deal

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is ready to discuss the debt ceiling with congressional leaders at the White House in a high-profile session with reverberations across the globe as early outlines of a potential deal begin to emerge despite painstakingly slow negotiations.

Raising the stakes, the Tuesday afternoon session comes as Biden is preparing to depart for the Group of Seven summit in Japan where the U.S. leadership will be on the world stage later this week. The president and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy are trying to strike a budget deal before the U.S. Treasury runs out of cash to keep paying the nation’s bills, which could occur as soon as June 1.

While Biden has remained upbeat that “we’ll be able to do this,” McCarthy is prodding the president to move faster to avert a crisis. The Republican speaker says they need an agreement soon to avoid default. Expectations are low that a deal is that close at hand. Instead, it is more likely that staff talks will continue while the president is overseas.

“I just don’t see the progress happening,” McCarthy told reporters Monday.

But Biden was optimistic, saying over the weekend, “There’s a desire on their part as well as ours to reach an agreement.”

It’s the second time in a week that Biden has met with McCarthy of California and other congressional leaders at the White House. Biden is confronting a politically divided Congress for the first time on the debt ceiling, a test for both the president and McCarthy, the new speaker, as they work to stave off an economic crisis that could come from a federal default. The meeting will also include Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York.

Even as the Democratic president and the Republican speaker box around the politics of the issue — with Biden insisting he’s not negotiating over the debt ceiling and McCarthy working to extract spending cuts — various areas of possible agreement appear to be emerging.

Talks have been under way at the Capitol for much of the past week, closed-door discussions where White House and congressional staff are discussing what it would take to craft a budget deal that would unlock a separate vote to lift the nation’s borrowing capacity, now set at $31 trillion.

Among the items on the table: clawing back some $30 billion in untapped COVID-19 money, imposing future budget caps, approving permitting…