RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Beside gun control, another issue that may heat up in the Senate: President Obama's cabinet picks. The president has tapped Senator John Kerry as his next secretary of State; counterterrorism adviser John Brennan to be CIA director; his chief of staff, Jack Lew, to be the next Treasury Secretary; and likely the most controversial choice, former Senator Chuck Hagel for secretary of Defense.
Each nomination has to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. And they all could be stopped by a Senate filibuster - that is, the refusal by any one of 100 senators to let a matter come to a final vote.
Now, we should tell you that NPR's David Welna is fighting laryngitis. Nevertheless, our congressional correspondent tells us that these nominations arrive just as Senate Democrats are pushing to make filibusters harder to pull off.
DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: Senate Democrats put their GOP colleagues on notice after the November election that when the new Congress convened this month, they'd be cracking down on the filibuster. Republicans, they said, had abused Senate rules by mounting hundreds of filibusters over the last few years. They said they could change those rules not with the 67 votes normally required, but by a simple 51-vote majority - as long as the Senate officially remained in its first legislative day.
It's what's known as The Nuclear Option, and the Democrats' threat to use it infuriated minority leader Mitch McConnell.
SENATOR MITCH MCCONNELL: Are we going to break the rules to change the rules, employ The Nuclear Option; fundamentally change the body, not have a negotiation between the two leaders about what adjustments might be appropriate to make the Senate work better. Oh, no. We're going to do it on our own.
WELNA: That was in November. But McConnell now appears willing to cut a deal on filibusters with majority leader Harry Reid. The top Democrat has kept the Senate in its first legislative day enabling a rule change with just 51 votes. But Reid also declared on the Senate's opening day, earlier this month, that he was ready to work with McConnell to find common ground on changing the filibuster rules.
SENATOR HARRY REID: I am confident that the Republican leader and I can come to an agreement that allow Senate to work more efficiently. We talked again today. We just haven't had time with the other things that we've been dealing with to spend enough time together to do this, but we definitely want to move forward to try to make this place work better.
WELNA: And the first step in doing that, said Rules Committee Chairman Charles Schumer, would be requiring those mounting a filibuster to actually hold the Senate floor by speaking.
SENATOR CHARLES SCHUMER: If you have to talk, if you have to be on the floor and actually filibuster, as opposed to just invoking the rules, you're going to use it sparingly.
WELNA: Should that happen, the Senate would be going back to an old tradition, as seen in the 1939 movie classic "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," which has actor Jimmy Stewart mounting a talking filibuster on the Senate floor.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON")
JIMMY STEWART: (as Mr. Smith) All right, sir. I guess I'll just have to speak to the people in my state from right here. And I'll tell you one thing, that wild horses aren't going to drag me off this floor until those people have heard everything I've got to say, even if it takes the whole winter.
WELNA: There's also a push to make it harder to filibuster presidential nominations. Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley says the founding fathers never intended the Senate to be a nominations graveyard.
SENATOR JEFF MERKLEY: Show me a Federalist Paper, in the discussions over how the Constitution was put together, where any of our framers argued that advice and consent is designed so that Congress can basically damage the executive branch, judicial branch, by refusing to consider nominations.
WELNA: New Mexico Democrat Tom Udall is confident the rules on the filibuster will be tightened.
SENATOR TOM UDALL: The newer members coming in, the ones that - the senators who've been here are very impatient with the way the place is operating. And you put those two things together, and I think it gives us some real momentum.
WELNA: Still, most Senate Republicans, and some Democrats as well, are wary of eroding the power of the Senate's minority. Arizona Republican John McCain warns that those pushing for change could one day regret it.
SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: Most of them, in all due candor and honesty, have never been in the minority. Those who have been in both majority and minority are the most reluctant to see this.
WELNA: If a deal is reached, it would likely require a 60-vote supermajority - the same number needed to end a filibuster.
David Welna, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MARTIN: You're listening to NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)