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It was member against member, offical position against private desire, as Congress wrestled today with whether to let a 50 percent pay increase take effect next week.

Speaker Jim Wright, faced with mounting public opposition to the raise, has decided to stick to his plan to let the increase for members of Congress and top Government officials take effect at 12:01 A.M. on Feb. 8, but to follow up almost immediately with legislation to decrease it, lawmakers said.

The Speaker favors a 30 percent raise, they said. The lawmakers added that House Republicans favor Mr. Wright's general plan but want to lower the increase further and revamp the format for handling future raises. The Senate, which is expected to vote against the raise, has not agreed to any part of Mr. Wright's plan. Corridors of Regret

Under the system created by Congress, raises are recommended by a committee representing all three branches of Government. They become effective unless both houses of Congress vote against them in a resolution that is then signed by the President. The current raise, which would increase Congressional salaries from $89,500 to $135,000, was approved by President Reagan and included in his budget for the 1990 fiscal year. President Bush has also said he supports it.

As lawmakers negotiated intensely behind the scenes today, the corridors and offices of Capitol Hill were full of spoken regrets about the raise. Many members publicly attacked it, earning the enmity of colleagues who favor the raise and who believe that its opponents are playing to the grandstands.

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''We're probably about as welcome as a skunk at a Sunday afternoon picnic discussing this with our colleagues,'' said Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican who was one of six Senators testifying today against the raise.

Fewer than one Congressman in 10 was willing to come out publicly for the increase, according to a survey by Ralph Nader.

One of them was Representative William H. Gray 3d, Democrat of Pennsylvania. ''I think I'm worth 1 percent of what Sugar Ray Leonard makes,'' he said. ''I think I'm worth 7 percent of what Tom Brokaw makes.'' 'It's an Embarrassment'

The strains were beginning to show on an institution that prides itself on maintaining a calm facade in the face of duress. ''It's painful; its an embarrassment,'' said Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat of New York and a supporter of the raise.

In the Senate, members snapped at each other at the final hearings on the issue and prepared for a vote Thursday or Friday.

In the House, Democrats who want the raise were furious at their leader, Mr. Wright, whose effort to deflect some of the political heat from himself only stoked the fires and endangered the raise.

Mr. Wright, in an unheard-of action that included rank-and-file Republicans in deciding how to handle significant legislation, asked all 435 House members in a secret ballot whether they thought there should be a vote on the raise before the Wednesday deadline. He was at home today reviewing the questionaires, and Mr. Wright's spokesman, Mark Johnson, said the Speaker was not ready to discuss the findings.

Lawmakers said the survey, which also asked whether Representatives would prefer a raise of only 30 percent, was designed to produce support for Mr. Wright's plan to approve the raise and then seek to reduce it. Anger at Colleagues

Most of Mr. Wright's House colleagues have viewed his survey as a blunder. He initiated it without consulting colleagues in the House leadership, according to the leaders' aides.

Mr. Wright acted after watching Senator Lloyd Bentsen, Democrat of Texas and one of the Senate's 54 millionaires, say on television that he opposed the raise. The Speaker was also reported to be angry with some collegues who had come to him and urged him to stand by the raise and then told their hometown newspapers that they were against it.

Representative Tom Tauke, Republican of Iowa and an opponent of the raise, said he knew of at least one House member who had sent a copy of the questionnaire to Mr. Wright supporting the raise while sending another copy to the media urging that it be killed.

In the hearing of the Senate Government Operations Committee, the raise prompted a rare exchange of public unpleasantries.

Senator Gordon J. Humphrey, Republican of New Hampshire, criticized Congress for the system of allowing raises to go into effect without a vote and then charged that the system itself had been adopted without a vote.

''Absolutely false,'' snapped Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska and the minority leader. He then demanded that Mr. Humphrey stop making the assertion. ''If you read the report that you talk about, you'd know,'' Mr. Stevens said. ''Maybe you should see what goes on in the Congress.''

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