Senate Republicans are considering a unilateral change to Senate procedures that would limit the ability of the minority party to drag out debate on executive branch nominees once the Senate votes to end debate on those nominees, known as cloture.

Under the current process, voting for cloture on a nominee sets up 30 hours of post-cloture debate, then a confirmation vote. But Republicans are mulling whether to chop that down significantly, possibly as low as eight hours, in order to speed up the process of approving nominees.

The change is being considered this week, when the GOP Senate is also expected to change Senate precedent to allow cloture to be won with just a simple majority vote, instead of the current 60-vote threshold.

Both changes would be made via the so-called " nuclear option," which is a decision to change the Senate process by the majority without input from the minority. Democrats were already expected to vigorously oppose the Supreme Court change, and the additional change that limits debate is likely to anger them further and lead to charges that the Senate is no longer a place where compromise is reached, but is instead just like the House where simple majority rules.

Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., pitched his GOP colleagues Tuesday on shortening the amount of time that senators can talk about a nominee post-cloture. Lankford wants to cut that time to no more than eight hours, as Democrats have used the 30-hour rule to delay the confirmation of even non-controversial presidential appointees, such as the incoming secretary of agriculture.

"That gives time to still do post-cloture debate, but the real debate has already ended because you've already had the initial votes," Lankford, who first contemplated the idea as part of a working group on Senate rules last year, told the Washington Examiner. "The founders didn't want us to be efficient, they wanted us to be slow and deliberative. But this is after the deliberation is pretty finished. You should be able to bring it to a close when the outcome is certain."

In 2013, Democrats changed the process for all nominees except those for the Supreme Court, which allowed cloture with just 51 votes instead of 60. At the time, Republicans complained that Democrats made this change unilaterally, without the usual super-majority vote that included Republicans.

For Lankford's proposal to prevail, he and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., would have to overcome similar GOP skepticism about "breaking the rules to change" rules. When they invoke the nuclear option to make it easier to confirm Supreme Court picks, they'll be able to argue that they're simply following in the footsteps of Democrats.

But if they use decide by a simple majority to cut back on post-cloture debate, they risk giving Democrats an argument for changing any number of Senate rules by "majority fiat," as McConnell once called it.

"So now the question is, if you can change the rules with a majority vote, how many rules do you change with a majority vote?" said Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., after closed-door lunch. "Since the rules now get changed with a majority vote, do you proceed with a majority vote to do only a very limited amount, or do you make it a broader decision?"

Lankford argued that the rule change is still a narrow decision, because it pertains only to business on the Senate's executive calendar, which governs presidential nominees and other business involving the executive branch, such as treaties submitted for ratification by the president. And he also argued that the eight hours of post-cloture debate would leave the minority with some leverage over the majority.

"With 1,200 people that have to go through the process, if every single one of them took eight hours, it would not be possible to run the calendar," Lankford said. "So the minority still has leverage to be able to forge negotiations."

One of McConnell's spokesmen told the Washington Examiner there is "nothing to report" about the meeting beyond senators offering "lots of ideas" this week, but the majority leader's colleagues believe he favors the idea.

"We had extensive conversation in conference today on a very important day with a lot of important issues," one Republican senator, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Washington Examiner. "That much time is not being allotted by the leader if this doesn't have legs."

McConnell won't be able to proceed with Lankford's idea if three or more Republicans oppose the move, but the proposal is gaining traction even among old-guard Republicans who have been nervous about making significant changes to how the institution operates.

"I'm for that, bring it down to eight hours," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, told the Examiner while walking in the Senate hallways. "I think they'd like to do that, get it down to eight hours. I would support that — at least, that's my tentative [answer]."

"He's going to wait and see what the leader proposes," one of Hatch's aides added.