Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) may limit the number of amendments allowed on the upcoming Department of Homeland Security funding bill — if the legislation gets to that point at all.

“There may be a partial tree filling where they are not going to block out all amendments but I think there is going to be a bit of a controlled process there,” a Senate GOP aide tells National Review Online.

McConnell promised an open amendment process as leader of the Senate, but Democrats turned the debate over a Keystone-pipeline bill into a weeks-long process. The Senate voted on more amendments in two weeks than it did in all of 2014, under Democratic control.

“It became just such an endless process of proving how open we were that it took three weeks just to get a simple bill done,” says the aide.

Of course, Senate Democrats accused McConnell of shutting down debate precipitously when he finally did file cloture on the Keystone bill, so it’s certain that even a partial-filling of the amendment tree — the procedural tactic that Harry Reid used to block amendments — will provoke even more attacks and be used as an excuse to filibuster the DHS bill.

It may be a moot point, though, it Senate Democrats successfully filibuster the effort to take up the DHS funding bill, which prohibits implementation of the president’s November amnesty order.