WASHINGTON — After a historic week in Washington, D.C. involving a near government shutdown and the ouster of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, both western Massachusetts representatives in the U.S. House criticized the former speaker and the Republican Party for this week’s series of events.

“I’ve never seen a more dysfunctional group of people in my life,” said U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Worcester. “I said before that this is a clown show, but that’s disrespectful to working clowns.”

Upon his return from Washington on Wednesday afternoon, U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, D-Springfield, described what he called “a spectacle on the floor as Republicans debated Republicans” before the vote on the “motion to vacate” McCarthy’s position.

Over the weekend, rather than standing by steep spending cuts demanded by many Republican representatives that had no chance to clear the Democrat-controlled Senate, McCarthy decided to work with Democrats to pass a temporary funding bill that will keep the government open until Nov. 17.

His move was seen by many far-right Republicans as a betrayal of trust, and by Democrats as too little too late.

Consequently, for the first time in the House of Representatives’ 234-year history, with a 216-210 vote on Tuesday, the office of House speaker was declared vacant and McCarthy was removed from his job.

A group of eight Republicans joined all House Democrats in attendance in voting to oust McCarthy.

“He belatedly did the right thing on Saturday morning in avoiding a government shutdown, and then he denied responsibility on Sunday for how we got to the precipice,” said Neal, referring to a CBS interview when McCarthy blamed Democrats for the near shutdown. “I think the result was that he didn’t pick up any additional allies on our side for sure and he clearly lost some on the other side.”

“It shows a lack of goodwill that he conducted business with,” McGovern said. “When Republicans try to blame Democrats for Speaker McCarthy’s demise, it’s laughable. They lit themselves on fire yesterday on national TV, and now they expect Democrats to come to their aid and put the fire out.

“If they want our help, they have to talk to us in a respectful and serious way about some of our priorities and about some of the things that we want to see happen,” McGovern added.

Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-NC, is acting as speaker pro-tem until a new speaker is chosen by the House.

“Right now, the House is inoperable,” McGovern said, adding that the only power of the speaker pro-tem is the ability to oversee a process to elect a next speaker. “If there’s a national emergency or an international emergency, we can’t respond. … This put our nation in a very very dangerous spot.”

So far, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, and Rep. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma have emerged as potential Republican successors to McCarthy.

Meanwhile, both western Mass. congressmen will vote for Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

“That’s a party-line vote, so they’ve got a problem with the party-line votes; we don’t,” Neal said. “We’re gonna stand with our candidate. They’re gonna have trouble standing with theirs.”

“I hope and anticipate that sometime next week, once Republicans begin to figure out what path they want to travel, they will elect a more moderate Republican speaker, and we need to get on with keeping the government open.”

Said McGovern: “It’s not up to Democrats to choose a Republican speaker of the House.”

As for the next 45 days until the deadline to pass another spending bill to avoid a government shutdown, the two agree that the House has its work cut out.

“What Republican leaders should be doing is sitting down with Democrats in the House and in the Senate … and hashing out a deal to keep the government open for all of next year,” McGovern said. “It’s time to be adults and get serious about governing this country in a responsible way.”

Neal offered a caution: “If they’re going to continue to let maybe 20 people decide where this budget heads, we’re going to continue to stalemate.”

Both McGovern and Neal describe the current divide within the Republican Party as “Republican infighting” and a “Republican civil war,” respectively.

“All their talk about what support they have for these cuts … They were losing in their own party,” Neal said. “I’m hoping that the magnifying glass is going to be on many of these positions that they’ve taken. Talking about 60 and 70% cuts to domestic spending, it just won’t fly.”

McGovern pointed to a need for compromise to avoid a shutdown.

“I think the lesson here is that if you want to govern, you have to reach out across the aisle and build bipartisan coalitions,” McGovern said.

Reporting from the Associated Press was used in this story.

Maddie Fabian can be reached at mfabian@gazettenet.com.