[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 101 (Tuesday, June 14, 2022)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E617-E618]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    HONORING IRWIN GARFINKEL, PHD. ON THE OCCASION OF HIS RETIREMENT

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. ROSA L. DeLAURO

                             of connecticut

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, June 14, 2022

  Ms. DeLAURO. Madam Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I rise 
today to join family, friends, and colleagues in extending my very best 
wishes to Dr. Irwin Garfinkel on the occasion of his retirement. To say 
that he has left an indelible mark does not do justice to the impact 
that his professional contributions as a social worker and economist 
have made over the course of his career. There is no one that has done 
more to bring to the forefront of public debate the realities of 
poverty and its impact on families, children, and our communities. Dr. 
Garfinkel's volume of work has been extraordinary and we, as policy 
makers and as a society, have been fortunate to have benefitted from 
his knowledge and expertise.
  In a career that has spanned more than six decades, Dr. Garfinkel has 
dedicated countless hours to better understanding poverty, wealth, and 
the welfare state and how they shape communities and societies. Some of 
his earliest work was in Wisconsin, as the director of the Institute 
for Policy Research and later as the principle investigator of the 
Wisconsin Child Support Study where his research on child support and 
welfare helped to shape legislation not only in Wisconsin, but other 
states, within the U.S. Congress, and in other countries like Great 
Britain, Australia, and Sweden.
  Dr. Garfinkel is also the author of over two hundred articles and 
sixteen books or edited volumes on poverty, income transfers, program 
evaluation, single-parent families and child support, and the welfare 
state. In fact, his book ``Wealth and Welfare States: Is America 
Laggard or Leader'' and paper ``Welfare State Myths and Measurement'' 
take on widespread mistruths about poverty and the poor. Dr. Garfinkel 
went on to become a co-founding director of the Center on Poverty and 
Social Policy and spent decades at Columbia University where he was the 
Mitchell I. Ginsberg Professor of Contemporary Urban Problems and the 
co-founding director of the Columbia Population Research Center--the 
only such center to be funded by the National Institute of Child Health 
and Human Development to have been founded within a school of social 
work.
  Throughout his career, Dr. Garfinkel has demonstrated a remarkable 
commitment to not only combatting poverty, but to understanding its 
sources--to look at the root causes and then look at how social and 
public policy could help families to break its cyclical nature. I have 
a deep respect and admiration for the work he has done.
  I want to extend a special note of thanks to Dr. Garfinkel for the 
guidance and counsel he has given to me over the years, particularly 
with my work on expanding the child tax credit. That single public 
policy lifted half of American children out of poverty, and it did so 
because of the foundation of research and study that Irv provided. 
Passed and signed into law as part of the American Rescue Plan, we 
witnessed the economic benefit this policy had for families--especially 
the poor--and that is why we must continue the effort to make the 
expanded child tax credit permanent.

[[Page E618]]

  Today, as we mark Dr. Garfinkel's retirement, it is my hope that he 
knows that his commitment to ending poverty--from the research centers 
he has founded to his unparalleled catalog of work--will most certainly 
stand as a legacy that will continue to inspire new generations of 
social workers, economists, policy makers and advocates. It is with my 
deepest thanks and appreciation that I rise today to extend my 
heartfelt congratulations to Dr. Irwin Garfinkel on his retirement, and 
wish him many more years of health and happiness as he begins this new 
life chapter.

                          ____________________