HOUSTON, Texas (AFP) -- Lloyd Bentsen, who served as treasury secretary at the end of a long political career, but never achieved his dream of the U.S. presidency, died Tuesday at the age of 85, his family said.

Tributes were immediate in Congress. Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, called Bentsen a "guiding light" who focused on what was best for the country rather than what was best for himself.

A powerful figure in the U.S. Senate for nearly two decades, Bentsen ran for vice-president in 1988 on the ticket with failed Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis.

Bentsen was remembered for a retort in a 1988 vice- presidential debate, when he told his Republican rival, Dan Quayle, who had compared himself to former U.S. president John Kennedy: "You're no Jack Kennedy." Bentsen and Dukakis lost, however.

Although his political career did not match his ambitions, he carved out a role in economic policy. He also built a multimillion-dollar business between political stints.

"In a very real sense I have lived the American dream," Bentsen said as he announced his resignation as treasury secretary on December 6, 1994. "From being raised during the Depression on a Texas farm, to serving in both houses of Congress, having a business career, and both running for the second-highest job in the country and serving in the Cabinet."

Bentsen was named treasury secretary by president Bill Clinton in January 1993 and for nearly two years was an anchor figure in a Cabinet long on young and inexperienced figures.

Bentsen brought to the crucial post the gravitas of a long political career, and six years as chairman of the Senate finance committee.

He was also well aware of the demands of the real world outside the corridors of Capitol Hill, having previously spent a decade in business during which he built a multimillion-dollar fortune.

Bentsen was born into a wealthy family on February 11, 1921, in Mission, Texas.

He received a law degree from the University of Texas in 1942, after which he enlisted in the U.S. Army. He became a pilot and in early 1944 began flying combat missions in B-24s from southern Italy with the 449th Bomb Group.

He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal after flying 50 missions as a bomber pilot in Europe and being shot down twice.

When he returned home, Bentsen took the legal route into politics, serving as a county judge in Texas before being elected to the House of Representatives as a Democrat in 1948, becoming its youngest member at the age of 27.

He quit the House in 1955 and returned home to Texas to set up his own life insurance business, turning a family-provided stake of five million dollars into a corporate empire worth an estimated 25 million dollars.

By 1970, he had become president of Lincoln Consolidated, a financial holding institution, before he was elected to the Senate.

His political experience and contacts helped Clinton as he struggled to push major economic initiatives through a reluctant Congress.

Bentsen was instrumental in winning passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993, and the GATT world trade pact in 1994, tirelessly working telephones and turning out at press events to garner support for the administration's free-trade cause.

But the treasury job exposed him to the perils of a position where the slightest unguarded comment on the dollar or interest rates would move markets around the world.

Bentsen recalled just before announcing his resignation that he learned that lesson after being drawn into an off-the-cuff comment on the yen-dollar rate in one of his first public appearances as treasury secretary -- a mistake he did not make again.

Bentsen sought the Democratic nomination in the 1976 race for the White House. But he dropped out nine months before the election when it became clear that Jimmy Carter would win.

In a statement from the White House, President George W. Bush said: "Laura and I and the entire Bush family are saddened by Lloyd Bentsen's death. "Lloyd Bentsen was a man of great honor and distinction." (Bentsen)