Saying former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay "will be just fine" despite his Travis County indictments, Congressman Mike Conaway Wednesday announced he will host a re-election fundraiser for DeLay from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday at the Petroleum Club.

"I have great confidence in the justice system that Tom DeLay will be just fine. Mr. Earle has gone after conservatives in the past," the 11th Congressional District Republican said, referring to Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle.

"Not a lot of people know this, but Mr. DeLay is a devout Christian. He and his wife have been foster parents. He is a fine man. And if it hadn't been for him and our great Speaker of the House, Tom Craddick, in 2003 redistricting, I might not have been elected to Congress."

Conaway said afterward the Friday event will be open to the public to aid DeLay's District 22 race against former Democratic congressman Nick Lampson of Beaumont, who was defeated last year by Ted Poe. He said Lampson has not yet moved into DeLay's district.

Addressing 220 people at a Midland County Republican Women's luncheon at the Petroleum Club, he reviewed other issues including immigration and border security, a proposed state constitutional amendment to outlaw same sex marriages and the threat presented by controversial Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

The congressman hailed a recent appropriation to hire 1,500 more Border Patrolmen and said Texas-Mexico border security will be further addressed by the House before its Nov. 18 recess. He said the Senate will consider a guest worker program, which should not offer citizenship to immigrants, next year.

Conaway told questioners he opposes making English the national language to the exclusion of all others, explaining he is "not sure what that means." He said "the fears, biases and prejudices" associated with that issue and legal immigration should honestly confronted.

He said the Nov. 8 statewide constitutional amendments election is important in part because Proposition 2, to prohibit any form of marriage other than that between a woman and man, must be approved.

Describing Chavez as "a genuine bad guy," he said the Marxist leader is buying and manufacturing thousands of AK 47 assault rifles, acquiring hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition and supporting the Cuban economy by supplying dictator Fidel Castro with 90,000 barrels of oil a day.

As a freshman member of the House Budget, Armed Services and Agriculture Committees, Conaway said he has been dismayed at the difficulty of getting the federal budget out of the red. "Quite frankly, it is a Herculean task to reduce federal spending," he said.

He said most of the budget is dedicated to entitlement programs like Medicare and reducing the rate of their growth by even a tenth of a percent is met by fierce opposition. "Special interest groups are attached to every single dollar," he said.

The congressman said House partisanship hit a new peak last week with the 212-210 approval vote on the Gasoline for America's Security (GAS) Act, which almost failed when two Democrats who had pledged their support changed their minds after threats by their party's leaders. "It wasn't about refinery capacity," Conaway said.

Conaway told a questioner who dislikes Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement that he supported the pact to remove tariffs on American products and help ensure Dominican Republic and Central American textile jobs are not lost to China, Vietnam and India.

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