Thomas P. O'Neill Jr., a Democratic Power in the House for Decades, Dies at 81

Democrats and Republicans today bade a warm farewell to Thomas P. (Tip) O'Neill Jr., the gregarious and irrepressibly liberal Bostonian who symbolized the Democratic Party through much of the 1980's as Speaker of the House.

Mr. O'Neill, 81, died Wednesday night of cardiac arrest at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Since his retirement from the House in 1987, he had lived in Washington and Harwich Port, Mass., on Cape Cod.

President Clinton issued a statement today paying tribute to "a beautiful life well lived," and ordered Government flags lowered to half-staff until Mr. O'Neill's burial on Monday.

"Tip O'Neill was the nation's most prominent, powerful and loyal champion of working people," the President's statement said. "He loved politics and government because he saw politics and government could make a difference in people's lives. And he loved people most of all."

The current Speaker of the House, Thomas S. Foley of Washington, called Mr. O'Neill "the model of what a representative and a leader of the American people should be."

Today, the capital's Republicans largely agreed. "Partisanship was put aside, and we could be the best of friends," the House minority leader, Robert H. Michel of Illinois, said of Mr. O'Neill today on the ABC-TV News program "Good Morning America."