Opening and Welcome

Dean GarreyCarruthers: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I am Garrey Carruthers, director of Domenici Institute. Welcome to the fourth annual Domenici Public Policy Conference at New Mexico State University– the“Yale of the Yuccas.” I only say that when we have friends from the University of New Mexico here and we have a number of them including a number of students who are participating in our program. This is the largest registration we’ve ever had for the program; we have 850, about, people registered for the program. We have others trying to get in.

We’ll make room for them if we possibly can, but what we’re proudest most of is that our own students here at New Mexico State University and other universities have elected to come and sign up for certain sessions. So, we’ll have a lot of students for certain sessions, and then other sessions there may be less students; but, we’re expecting between five and six hundred at each one of our conversations. This is the first time, by the way, that we’ve ever had the session here in the Las Cruces Convention Center. Do you like the layout here? This is quite a deal.

We have to give credit to the voters, the city council, and New Mexico State University for developing this facility. We really need it in our community and we think the Domenici Conference is just one of many things that can use most of this capacity at least once or twice a year.

Now, I told the provost– is sitting over here– that this is the best conference we’ll ever have, and she said,“Well, Garrey, you always say it’s the best conference you’ll ever have. That’s what you said last year– it’s gonna be the best conference ever.”

Thisis going to be the best conference we’ve ever had. I will guarantee and, if you’ve looked at the agenda, you will find this is an amazing collection of speakers and we have to give credit not to myself and to my colleagues so much, as to Senator Pete Domenici who can arm twist as well now in retirement as he did when he was in the Senate. He picks up the phone and he calls Dr. Alice Rivlin– who’s up here[Applause]– he calls Dr. Alice Rivlin, who’s going to join us tomorrow for a conversation, and he just arm-twisted her into coming here, even though she’s had to divert herself from a vacation with her husband up in Canada, as I understand it. So, he is a powerful and persuasive senator in retirement. We count on him to continue to ask his friends to come and join us, and they do so. We’re going to continue to have this conference and have the level of speakers that we have.

Now, I want to acknowledge the organizers. Would the members of the committee, and probably most of them are standing up over here worrying about things, but– Sara Patricolo? Is Sara in the room? Sara Patricolo over here is our program manager. Give her a big hand for a lot of work. When you’re a one man band, as Sara is, you have to play awfully hard. We haven’t seen much stress in Sara until the last 24 hours. I don’t know why she’s getting stressed out; these things just kind of happen after you do good planning.

The members of the committee– I’ve seen members of the committee– Sharon, others, please stand. Give them a big hand as well for the organization.

Now, we do have some housekeeping items. There are refreshments at the back of the room. Again, just like the subscription to get here, they are $50 as well, to get a glass of water back there. Actually, there’s water and coffee that’s already sponsored s