Asked about when the rules change proposal would be brought to the Senate floor, a spokesman for McConnell said that members "are discussing, but no announcements have been made."

Republicans have floated cutting down on the amount of time it takes to clear a nominee for years but faced pushback from Democrats and even some members of their own party

But the GOP's expanded 53-seat majority in the Senate gives them more leeway to muscle through their proposal.

Using the "nuclear option" would allow Republicans to change the rules with only a simple majority. Democrats previously used the tactic to nix the 60-vote threshold for most nominations, while Republicans followed suit and got rid of the same hurdle for Supreme Court picks in 2017.

Currently, nominations face up to an additional 30 hours of debate time even after they’ve cleared an initial vote that shows they have the simple majority support needed to pass.But the proposal being discussed by Republicans, which was introduced by Sen.(R-Okla.) during the previous Congress, would cut the debate time down from 30 hours to eight hours. It would further cap post-cloture debate time for district court nominations at two hours.