A lot of attention has, deservedly, been focused upon the Republican governors — including Govs. Scott Walker (WI), John Kasich (OH), and Terry Branstad (IA) — who are trying to legislatively bust unions by removing the right of public sector workers to collectively bargain. But Republicans in Congress are by no means staying out of the union-busting game.

In addition to lending their support to Walker’s efforts, Republicans at the federal level are taking several steps to try to restrict unions and the workers they represent. Here are six examples:

– TAKING THE DEMOCRACY OUT OF UNION ELECTIONS: Last year, the National Mediation Board did away with an absurd rule that, for union elections under the Railway Labor Act, counted workers who didn’t vote as having voted against unionization. House Republicans are using legislation that reauthorizes the Federal Aviation Administration to try and reverse the board’s ruling, once against counting absent workers as votes against the union.

– CUTTING THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD: The continuing resolution passed by House Republicans includes a $50 million reduction in the National Labor Relations Board’s budget. The NLRB is tasked with overseeing management-labor relations under the National Labor Relations Act, and with issuing rulings regarding labor-related law and regulations. If the House GOP’s spending cuts are enacted, all NLRB staff members will have to be furloughed for 55 days, causing a backlog of cases to pile up.

– KEEPING FEDEX DRIVERS DOWN: Last year’s FAA reauthorization bill (which never passed) corrected an inequity in labor law that allows FedEx to prevent its drivers from unionizing. FedEx CEO Fred Smith — who was George W. Bush’s fraternity brother and has said that “I don’t intend to recognize any unions at Federal Express” — intensely lobbied against the provision, and House Republicans dutifully stripped it from this year’s FAA bill.

– PREVENTING TSA FROM UNIONIZING: Senate Republicans, during the debate over the Senate’s version of the FAA bill, attempted to attach an amendment that would block workers at the Transportation Security Administration from unionizing. That amendment was defeated and TSA employees begin voting in their unionization campaign tomorrow.

– NATIONAL “RIGHT TO WORK”: Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), joined by seven other Republican senators, introduced legislation today implementing so-called “right to work” at the federal level. Right to work laws allow workers to free-ride on union contracts without supporting the union, and weaken the bargaining rights of all workers, preventing them from receiving their fair share of productivity gains.

– CRANKING ABOUT CRAIG BECKER: President Obama last month renominated Craig Becker to the NLRB, prompting an outcry from all Senate Republicans. Becker is currently serving on the NLRB as a recess appointment, after Senate Republicans blocked his original nomination on the grounds that Becker once worked for labor unions.

At the state level, legislative union-busting has prompted a Main Street Movement to come together and stand up for workers and the middle-class. But will Republicans at the federal level take heed?

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) appeared on CNBC today to discuss the GOP’s vision for the economy and the budget. Cantor promised that the Republican majority in the House is “listening” and wants to go about “evening the playing field” between, amongst other parties, “fraudulent mortgage actors” and the homeowners they’ve harmed:

CANTOR: At the end of the day, really, in this country, it’s about everybody having a fair shot. And it’s the private sector employers and employees thinking they don’t have a fair shot cause there’s something going on with their politicians and the government worker unions. People are feeling, still, that fraudulent mortgage actors have caused their home values to be depressed and they can’t see that come back. There’s people looking at the gyrations on Wall Street thinking ‘hey, wait, a minute, what about my 401(k)?’ And so what we’re going to be about in Washington is to try and say, you know, you’ve got now a majority in Congress in the House that’s listening, that wants to go about evening the playing field, to give everybody that fair shot.

Watch it:

It’s good to hear Cantor admit that fraudulent mortgage lending took place. But while he’s acknowledged that reality today, Cantor has not had much sympathy for foreclosed-upon homeowners in the past. He criticized the Obama administration’s foreclosure prevention efforts as helping people who are not “playing and paying by the rules,” and said that those facing foreclosure simply “have to take responsibility for themselves.”

And Cantor’s position mirrors that of most House Republicans. When the “robo-signing” scandal first broke — which involved banks violating due process by approving foreclosures without actually examining the proper documentation — House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) decided that the proper remedy was to investigate whether poor people took out mortgages they couldn’t afford. House Republicans also voted en masse against the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, which created a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to police fraudulent and predatory mortgage lending.

House Republicans are also currently trying to “pull the plug” on federal foreclosure prevention programs, with Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-TX), Chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, saying that foreclosure prevention efforts simply “need to stop.” It’s fine that Cantor seems finally willing to accept that abuses occurred, but House Republicans have made it abundantly clear that they don’t plan to grapple with any of the fallout those abuses caused.

Much of the attention paid to Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) is deservedly focused on his attempt to legislatively bust unions by stripping public employees of their right to collectively bargain. However, the budget that Walker released last week contains a host of problematic policy proposals that adversely affect women, students, and Wisconsin’s low-income residents.

For instance, his budget repeals a law requiring insurance companies to cover prescription birth control and eliminates a program providing health services to uninsured women. He’s also proposed more than $900 million in cuts to Wisconsin’s public schools. Adding insult to injury, Walker’s budget codifies his intention to cut the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit, which goes to aid the state’s poorest residents. The non-partisan Wisconsin Taxpayer’s Alliance ran the numbers:

Walker proposes cutting about $16 million a year from the program, which in 2009 paid 273,939 low-income Wisconsin residents a total of $133 million.

Under Walker’s proposed biennial budget, a single mother with two children earning about minimum wage — $15,000 a year — would lose $302 of her $704 Earned Income Tax Credit next year, according to estimates from the nonpartisan Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance. A two-parent household with two children earning $30,000 a year would see its tax credit cut by $194 to $258, the alliance said.

In an interview last Friday, Walker derided the EITC as a “redistribution program” that involves “taking money from other taxpayers and giving it to individuals who have a limited tax liability.” However, the EITC is a proven anti-poverty measure that has enjoyed bi-partisan support in the state. “Cutting the EITC is essentially the same as raising taxes on low-income working families. Wisconsin’s credit was designed to lift the families of low-wage workers above the federal poverty level,” wrote the Wisconsin Budget Project’s Jon Peacock.

Citizens for Tax Justice added that cutting the EITC now, as the country still grapples with the effects of the Great Recession, amounts to “kicking these vulnerable families while they’re down”:

Millions of Americans are experiencing reduced work hours and wages, or are without a job at all, as a result of the lingering economic downturn. This means that more families are in need of the additional income assistance the credit provides to help pay for food, housing, transportation, and other necessities.

Walker has also proposed cutting cutting $9 million “in tax rebates to low-income homeowners under the Homestead Tax Credit.” These credits are designed to “offset the cost of property taxes for residents earning no more than $24,500 a year, many of them elderly.”