End of Era as House Democrats Hold Gavel One Last Time : Congress: Sense of ‘overwhelming sadness’ pervades as impact of minority status hits home on last day of session. GOP gleefully looks ahead.

WASHINGTON —  They came back for a rare lame-duck session to vote on a global trade agreement but for House Democrats it was clear that Tuesday would be remembered for another reason: it was their last day in charge of an institution that they have controlled for 40 years.

“I almost wish we hadn’t come back for (this). It’s so humiliating,” lamented a senior House leadership staff member as she cleaned out her desk and prepared to search for a new job.

“Everyone is feeling very disoriented,” said retiring Rep. Timothy J. Penny (D-Minn.). “Democrats are the minority for the first time in 40 years and don’t really know what it’s like to be on the outside.”

The impact of the change “is only just starting to hit home for Democrats,” agreed Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) as he hurried off to chair what he ruefully predicted would be the “last tobacco hearing” in Congress. Rep. Thomas J. Bliley Jr. (R-Va.), Waxman’s pipe-puffing successor as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee’s subcommittee on health and the environment, already has made clear that he thinks the tobacco industry has been an unfair victim of Waxman’s anti-smoking crusade.

Although Republican leaders have been busy working on the transition for the last three weeks, the realization that an end of an era was at hand did not begin to sink in for many lawmakers until they returned to the Capitol for the brief post-election session. They returned to decide the fate of the 103rd Congress’ last piece of unfinished business: the 124-nation trade agreement that would create a new World Trade Organization as the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

“On the floor, our side of the aisle, there is just this overwhelming sadness,” said Rep. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) as he emerged from the debate. “There are a lot of tears as we say goodby to members who aren’t coming back next year and there is a lot of queasiness over what will happen next. . . . It is indeed the end of a long era.”

Some House Republicans, eagerly looking forward to setting the congressional agenda for the first time since Dwight D. Eisenhower occupied the White House, seemed a little less than magnanimous in victory.

“I’d like to see this as the last hurrah of the Democratic majority for the next 40 years,” said Rep. Dick Armey of Texas, who is expected to be House majority leader in the new Congress.

“Speaker Newt Gingrich. Deal With It,” proclaimed the bumper sticker Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) flashed from the inside of his jacket to colleagues and reporters.

On the other hand, some House Democrats were also less than gracious in defeat--particularly as they argued intensely among themselves over the direction their party should take in the wake of its devastating losses at the polls Nov. 8.

Indeed, with their leadership elections only a day away, it was apparent that the Democrats remained deeply divided, with some arguing that they should adopt the same guerrilla-style tactics that Republicans used to thwart Democratic legislation when they were in the minority and others urging a more moderate, coalition-building approach.

“It wasn’t a love-in,” Rep. Jane Harman (D-Rolling Hills) said of the recriminations and arguments that were exchanged at a closed-door caucus of House Democrats earlier in the day. “There was some very blunt talk by a lot of folks.”

Rep. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, the Democrats’ chief deputy whip in this Congress, said that his colleagues are caught between determination to take full advantage of the liberating role that will come with their shift into the minority and their frustration over what to do next.

“Democrats are resolved to take back the House but they’re also frustrated because taking back the House is going to require a perfect strategy and we don’t have one,” Richardson said, acknowledging that, in the wake of the elections, deep fissures exist both between Democrats in Congress and the White House and among congressional Democrats themselves.

Those splits seem destined to grow wider, if, as expected, the Democrats elect a solidly liberal slate of lawmakers when they meet today to fill their leadership positions for the next Congress.

Rep. Charles W. Stenholm of Texas, the conservative Democrat who is challenging Majority Whip David E. Bonior of Michigan for the post of minority whip, acknowledged that he still faces an uphill fight but predicted that the outcome will be “a lot closer than anyone thinks” because of wide dissatisfaction with the old party leadership.

“There’s a lot of frustration within the conservative wing of the party that we’ve never been listened to . . . tolerated, perhaps, but never listened to,” Stenholm said, adding that conservative Democrats “vented their spleen” at the liberal leadership during the Democratic meeting.

But as they argued, with some outgoing Democrats blaming their election defeats on the tough votes that they were forced to cast for President Clinton’s budget and gun-control measures in the last Congress, the most emotional rebuke came from defeated freshman Karan English of Arizona.

“Karan got up and said that it was because of the tough votes that she was proud to have been here, that voting for the Brady Bill (which provided a waiting period for handgun purchases) and deficit reduction made it worth losing (her reelection bid),” said retiring Rep. Philip R. Sharp (D-Ind.).

English got a standing ovation.

In the end, however, it was the Democrats’ defeated leader, House Speaker Thomas S. Foley of Washington, who brought tears to the eyes of members on both sides of the aisle by ending his 30 years in Congress with a gesture as generous as it was rare.

Summoning retiring Minority Leader Robert H. Michel of Illinois to the front of the chamber after the House had passed the trade agreement, Foley handed him the gavel and let him take the chair for the first and last time in his 38 years in the House, all of them in the minority.

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to actually wield this gavel and sit in this chair,” Michel said in a voice choked with emotion.

As the two adversaries embraced, the bitter partisanship of the last two years was forgotten. But only for a moment.