President Biden and Speaker McCarthy have met for their second round of debt ceiling negotiations after their top aides worked through the weekend to find a compromise. Any deal appears so far out of reach as fears of default abound. 

On Tuesday, the two men sat down at the White House along with the minority leaders of the House and Senate, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries and Senator McConnell. After their meeting, Mr. McCarthy told reporters outside of the White House that the only agreement he reached with the administration is that each group designate a “point person” to lead negotiations for the coming weeks. 

Mr. McCarthy confirmed that he and the White House are “very far apart” even after Tuesday’s negotiating session. When asked if he is optimistic about the prospects for a deal, the speaker said he “would be” had the negotiations begun back in February, when Mr. Biden refused to sit down. 

Before his meeting, Mr. McCarthy demanded that the White House acquiesce to work requirements for welfare — something Mr. Biden supported as senator during President Clinton’s welfare reform efforts in the 1990s. 

Before he departed Capitol Hill for the White House, Mr. McCarthy sounded frustrated by the lack of progress. “We’ve got to get serious,” he said, according to Jake Sherman of Punchbowl News. “At this point, time is of the essence. You wasted 97 days. … We want to lift people out of poverty. We want to grow our economy and we want to spend less than we spent before to curb inflation. It’s not that difficult.”

In a sign of how worried the White House is about a potential default, Mr. Biden has abandoned part of a foreign trip in order to be in Washington for negotiations ahead of the June 1 default date. The president will depart for a G7 meeting in Japan on Wednesday, but canceled a scheduled visit to Papua New Guinea and Australia after that summit. 

Secretary Yellen also raised concerns in a speech delivered Tuesday. During this year’s Independent Community Bankers of America Capital Summit, Ms. Yellen reiterated her estimation that America would breach the debt limit “as early as June 1” and laid out the potential consequences of a breach. 

“A U.S. default would generate an economic and financial catastrophe,” she told those assembled. “The economic crisis would be exacerbated by possible disruptions to the federal government’s operations. Essential services that enable global commerce rely on the work of federal employees and contractors. That includes air traffic control and law enforcement, border security and national defense, and food safety and our telecommunications systems.”

One of the greatest challenges for Mr. McCarthy is not the president’s intransigence, but rather the politics of managing his increasingly conservative caucus. As he fought to obtain the speaker’s gavel in January, Mr. McCarthy handed the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus a major victory: Any one member is now able to go to the House floor and call for a motion to vacate the speaker’s chair, meaning a single Republican who is dissatisfied with the speaker’s debt ceiling compromises could conceivably move to throw him out of the job.     

One Freedom Caucus member, Congressman Eli Crane, told CNN that he has had conversations with some of his caucus colleagues about calling for a vote of no confidence in the speaker, which could lead to another seemingly endless voting process to either retain Mr. McCarthy or choose a new leader.     

“It does come up from time to time,” Mr. Crane said of the possibility of removing Mr. McCarthy. “We look at all of the alternatives and contingency plans that could play out over the next two years.”

There is some hope for Mr. McCarthy, though, should he choose to make a deal that is palatable to Democrats. On Tuesday, Politico reported that a number of centrist House Democrats are open to protecting Mr. McCarthy from his right flank and keep his job should he find a compromise. 

“We’ll protect him if he does the right thing,” one Democrat said of the speaker, signaling they would vote for him for speaker should a conservative lawmaker issue a motion to vacate the chair.