Remember that Memorial Day deadline President Biden gave Senate Republicans for coming up with an infrastructure plan that was real and not ridiculous? And how they kept failing, only to be granted one more meeting with the president or cabinet secretaries or key staff? It’s still not over.

“I think we are getting pretty close to a fish-or-cut-bait moment,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday. “We believe in this process, but we also very much agree that this can’t to go on forever.” Talks will continue during the congressional recess, but a final decision about the way forward is unlikely until lawmakers return next week, with Buttigieg saying, “We need a clear direction” by June 7. That’s when the Senate returns from the holiday recess.

To that end, Biden is meeting with lead Republican “negotiator” (if what’s been happening here can be called negotiations) Sen. Shelley Moore Capito again. “The president is looking forward to hosting Senator Capito on Wednesday afternoon at the White House, where they will continue their bipartisan negotiations about investing in our middle class and economic growth through infrastructure,” a White House official told CBS News. 

“I think we can get to real compromise, absolutely, because we’re both still in the game,” Capito said Sunday, on Fox News Sunday, of course. “We realize this is not easy. I think we bring every idea that’s on the table into the negotiations to see how we can achieve this and get it across the threshold.” Uh, huh.

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She also said, “I think we are building those blocks towards a really good, solid infrastructure package that has bipartisan support … (Biden) told me on the phone just the day before yesterday, ‘Let’s get this done.’ And I think that means he has his heart is in this.”

For anyone who has been watching politics in the 21st century, this has an uncomfortably familiar ring to it. Here’s Sen. Chuck Grassley, in 2009, writing at Politico: “With bipartisanship, reform is possible.” He was talking about healthcare reform.

“In March, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus and I joined other members of Congress and the president at a White House forum on health care,” he wrote. “That day, Baucus and I announced an ambitious schedule for developing a bipartisan health reform proposal.” Six months later, Baucus released a plan that Grassley refused to support. Grassley, of course, went on to vote against the Affordable Care Act when it finally passed the following March, a full year after he declared his commitment to bipartisanship.

Baucus spent months and months chasing after Grassley and the mythical Republicans who were going to join him in support, effectively watering down the vision for healthcare reform at every pass. For the next seven years, Republicans refused to give up the effort to repeal the law, at least in Congress. They’ve never stopped fighting it in the courts. Now, 11 years later, the Supreme Court is poised to rule on another challenge to Obamacare, with yet another in the pipeline in lower courts.

There are Democrats who remember that. Like Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who spoke for a lot of her colleagues on CNN Sunday. “We have to answer that moment with bold reforms, and I think waiting any longer for Republicans to do the right thing is a misstep,” Gillibrand told Jake Tapper. “I don’t think there’s necessarily goodwill behind all negotiations, and I think the American people elected us to solve the problem of Covid, to rebuild the economy, rebuild the infrastructure, and I think it’s our moment to act.”

Yes. That. Of all the people who you’d think would see some parallels here, the guy who was vice president during those ACA negotiations, the one who famously called it a “big fucking deal” when it was finally done—with only Democratic support—would be the first. Particularly when Mitch McConnell is lurking in the background with his promise that he’s “100% committed” to fighting Biden’s agenda.

Kind of like how he was 100% committed to making President Obama a one-term president. He didn’t succeed at that, but he did manage to block most of Obama’s second-term efforts and judicial appointments, including a Supreme Court seat, so that there’s now a Supreme Court that could conceivably undo the biggest achievement of the Obama years: Obamacare.

But here we go, with yet another extension for Republicans to do a damn thing. Politico—yes it’s Politico so lots of salt grains—reports that the “president still has faith in his ability to win over reluctant Senate Republicans and advisers see benefits—reputationally and politically—in working across the aisle.” Yes, there’s a great deal in there that could be very good for Republicans—it’s infrastructure! Millions of dollars for each of their states is out there, within their grasp. But doing what’s right for their constituents has really not been the hallmark of the GOP this century. (Except for the really rich ones, with all those tax cuts.)

Still, one Democratic senator who might have some insight thinks he knows what’s going on here. “We’re not simply seeking a bipartisan deal for the sake of bipartisanship,” Pennsylvania Democrat Bob Casey told Politico. “It was to demonstrate to some moderates in our caucus that it was an effort that was undertaken seriously and we saw it through,” Casey added. “And I think by skipping that we wouldn’t have been able to get to 50 votes.” In other words, this is all about Joe Manchin and getting him to go along with doing the bill by budget reconciliation, so it only requires a simple majority vote.

If that’s the case, then everyone had better get on the stick. There’s very little legislative time left to get it done with other huge, must-pass efforts like next year’s budget and a necessary hike to the debt ceiling on the horizon. Not to mention all the other bits and pieces of legislation from the House that are piling up, like the Equality Act, and the For the People Act, and the Paycheck Fairness Act, and D.C. statehood.

To borrow Buttigieg’s analogy, there’s only so much line Biden can afford to cast out in order to snag Republicans. It’s running out.