RIGHT SPEAK: The GOP is beginning to Eye an Agenda for Possible Senate Control

As odds improve that the GOP will control both chambers of Congress next year, Senate Republicans are starting to plan an agenda intended to extract policy concessions from President Barack Obama without inducing the capital's market-rattling brinkmanship of recent years.

Republican senators say the emerging plans aim to show voters that the party can successfully govern—enacting GOP policy while avoiding a sharply confrontational tone that some Republicans fear could endanger the party's electoral prospects in 2016. Some of the top goals include approving the Keystone XL pipeline, passing accelerated rules for overseas trade agreements, speeding up federal reviews of natural-gas exports and repealing the 2010 health law's medical-device tax.

Such an approach has some in the tea-party wing calling the strategy too cautious, saying the point of fighting for a GOP majority is to push for more ambitious Republican priorities.

Republicans control the House and need to gain six seats for a majority in the Senate, an outcome that independent analysts say is increasingly likely due to Mr. Obama's low approval ratings and an election map that forces Democrats to defend seats in some GOP-leaning states.

Top Republicans from each Senate committee have been meeting "for some time" to discuss which bills stand the best chance of clearing a GOP-controlled Congress, said Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee. Many of these measures have drawn some level of Democratic support, suggesting that Mr. Obama might have trouble rejecting them.

"I want to put things on the president's desk that he will have to think long and hard about and would be encouraged to sign," Mr. Barrasso said.

Republicans aren't expected to win the 60 seats needed in the Senate to overcome Democratic procedural hurdles on most legislation, leading some in the GOP to aim for opportunities to pull policy modestly to the right and at least map out priorities for bigger issues like overhauling the tax code.

In addition, some Republicans worry that the kind of confrontation that marked recent budget talks could create voter backlash ahead of 2016, when the party is aiming to win the White House and may have to defend more than two-thirds of the Senate seats up for election that year.

"No senator will be more disappointed if we happen to end up in the majority and we squander it totally by overreaching." said Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.).