On the recordJune 6, 2012
Madam President, the bad news keeps coming. Europe is in dire straits, with the debt-riddled economies of Greece and now Spain threatening the future of the continent's economic union. There is real concern that this debt-fueled contagion in Europe will undermine our economy as well, and our economy cannot take too many more hits. The unemployment rate went back up to 8.2 percent last month. Only 69,000 net new payroll jobs were created. That is barely keeping up with population growth and is hardly the type of robust job growth that will be the foundation of a lasting and meaningful economic recovery. Now, we should have seen this coming. The minutes of the Federal Reserve's most recent monetary policymaking meeting make numerous mention of uncertainties surrounding fiscal policy and that those uncertainties are a risk to the economic outlook. Fed policymakers noted that ``they generally saw the U.S.…





