By Emma Dumain and Meredith Dake and JM Rieger

In an exclusive interview with CQ Roll Call on Dec. 5, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi insisted she doesn’t gloat when House Republicans can’t shore up the votes among their own members to pass any number of critical bills, and it’s Democrats who get to swoop in and call themselves the heroes. “I would rather they did the responsible thing so we wouldn’t have to bail them out every time,” the California Democrat quipped of her GOP counterparts. “I don’t think anyone is irrelevant. We have leverage if they don’t have the votes,” she said. “They have leverage because they know we will be responsible. And that allows them to be irresponsible to a certain extent.”