Republican efforts to cut the debt and put people back to work would help the United States economy avoid “European-style austerity,” House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) said on NBC’s Meet The Press yesterday.

The House GOP budget seemingly embraces that model, calling for massive reductions in spending like those that have led to double-dip recessions across Europe. And though analyses have found that the budget, which Ryan authored, would actually add to the national debt, the GOP’s vision is necessary to address joblessness and avoid austerity, he said:

RYAN: What we’re saying is let’s get on growth and prevent austerity. The whole premise of our budget is to pre-empt austerity by getting our borrowing under control, having tax reform for economic growth, and preventing Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid from going bankrupt. That pre-empts austerity. The president, his budget, the fact the Senate hasn’t done a budget in three years, puts us on a path towards European-like austerity. That’s what we’re trying to prevent from happening in the first place.

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Not only would Ryan’s plan add to the debt, it would also increase the number of people who are looking for a job, resulting in a net loss of 4.1 million jobs over the next two years, according to the Economic Policy Institute:

The Ryan budget would nevertheless immediately enact aggressive spending cuts — particularly to the social safety net — which would reduce employment by 1.3 million jobs in fiscal 2013 and 2.8 million jobs in fiscal 2014, relative to current budget policies.

Ryan claims he wants to avoid European-style austerity, rein in the debt, and put people back to work. His plan, however, would end similarly to European austerity, leading to higher levels of debt and an unnecessary and unneeded spike in joblessness.

During a press conference Monday afternoon, President Obama hit back against critics — including surrogate and Newark Mayor Cory Booker — who have expressed disappointment over his campaign’s effort to attack Mitt Romney’s record of job creation at Bain Capital, a leveraged buyout firm the former Massachusetts governor headed from 1984 to 1999.

“The reason this is relevant to the campaign is because my opponent, Governor Romney, his main calling card for why he thinks he should be president, is his business experience,” Obama said. “He is not going out there touting his experience in Massachusetts. He’s saying, ‘I’m a business guy, I know how to fix it.’” Obama explained that while private equity is “set up to maximize profits” for shareholders, the president is responsible for the health of the economy as a whole and fostering job creation:

OBAMA: But understand that their priority is to maxmize profits. And that’s not always going to be good for communities or businesses or workers…And when you’re president, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, then your job is not simply to maximize profits. Your job is to figure out how everyone in the country has a fair shot. Your job is to think about those workers who get laid off and how are we paying for their retraining? Your job is to think about how those communities can start creating new clusters so they can attract new businesses. Your job as president is to think about how do we set up an equitable tax system so that everybody is paying their fair share that allows us then to invest in science and technology and infrastructure, all of which will help us grow. And so, if your main argument for how to grow the economy is, ‘I knew how to make a lot of money for investors, then you’re missing what this job is about.’

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Romney has placed his career at Bain the center of his campaign. On several occasions he has asserted that, while at Bain, he was responsible for creating 100,000 jobs. Multiple independent fact checkers have concluded that Romney’s claims on jobs are simply false.

The 15 freshmen Republican representatives in the House Tea Party Caucus each ran in 2010 on a populist anti-Wall Street message, highlighting their opposition to bank bailouts like the 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and criticizing Washington for enabling the banking sector as it became “Too Big to Fail.” After winning, all fifteen received significant PAC contributions from the banking industry — and have become a reliable vote and mouthpiece for the financial industry, a ThinkProgress analysis of campaign contributions, voting records and public statements reveals.

Rather than campaigning on a typical pro-business platform, the Tea Party freshmen tapped into public resentment of big banks and bailouts. For example, then-candidate Sandy Adams (R-FL) said on her campaign website that she “opposes government bailouts” and “would have voted against TARP and the auto bailout.” Jeff Landry (R-LA) said bailouts of private businesses had “corrupted our free market system by rewarding the irresponsible and penalizing the responsible,” blasting “bank bailouts, which led to taxpayer money directly or indirectly going into multi-million dollar bonuses.”

But in Congress, the Tea Party has toed the line for big banks. Eleven of the 15 have become co-sponsors of H.R. 3461, a top priority for the ABA. According to Americans for Financial Reform, the legislation would “tilt the playing field further in the direction of excessive deference to industry interests and tie the hands of regulators attempting to protect the public interest.” The bill would make it harder for bank examiners to do their job, giving regulatory responsibilities to an industry that’s already shown it can’t police itself.

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Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has based his campaign on President Obama’s handling of the economy, telling voters that Obama made the economy worse and that he is better suited to fostering a recovery.

Republican governors in states across the country, including some states that will play a pivotal role in deciding the November election, are taking a different view of the situation. Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R), for instance, issued a press release this morning touting “encouraging indicators that Florida’s economy is steadily moving in the right direction,” telling his constituents that nearly a quarter-million jobs were available:

SCOTT: Today’s unemployment report adds to the series of encouraging indicators that Florida’s economy is steadily moving in the right direction. With 243,594 job openings listed by various help-wanted websites and our unemployment rate down 2.2 points to 8.7%, more Floridians are finding new jobs throughout the Sunshine State.

Scott isn’t alone. Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s (R) web site featured a blog post touting the “thousands of Virginians working again” and the ways in which the state’s economy is recovering:

MCDONNELL: Virginia is growing strong again. Through a bipartisan effort in Richmond, and the hard-work, innovation and dedication of the people of Virginia, our economy is recovering. There is a lot to celebrate in our Commonwealth. With unemployment at over a 3-year low, agricultural exports at a record high, and thousands of Virginians working again, this is a great time to recognize all the great things happening in our tremendous Commonwealth.

And during an April event with Romney, Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) told Otterbein University students that there are tens of thousands of open jobs and that “we’re doing much better in Ohio now“:

KASICH: We have a web site called Ohio Means Jobs. There’s probably about 80,000 jobs listed on there. … Look through that, and you’re going to find a lot of exciting opportunities. … There’s a lot of really exciting things in this state where you can go and work.

Across the country, in fact, unemployment rates are falling and jobs are returning to state economies, as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest jobs report detailed last week. As Romney continues to ignore the fact that the economy is recovering, facts — and the Republican governors who have endorsed him — are telling a different story.

4,690 people were killed at work in 2010, up three percent from 2009, the Center for Public Integrity reports. That means that more Americans died in their workplaces in one year than died during the entire war in Iraq.

But while Republicans are fighting tooth and nail to protect defense spending from budget cuts, they are simultaneously looking to defund the agency that protects workers from physical harm in the workplace.

Many on-the-job deaths were met with only a small fine, an average of $7,900. Some workplaces were never inspected at all. And because of understaffed regulation offices — and the looming threat of further budget cuts — the numbers aren’t likely to change:

It would take the perpetually short-staffed OSHA 130 years to inspect every workplace in the U.S. Managers and their underlings must strike a balance between meeting “performance goals” set in Washington and conducting comprehensive inspections when deaths occur. A target of 42,250 inspections nationwide was established for fiscal year 2012, up 5.6 percent from the previous year’s goal. The number of federal inspectors, meanwhile, has stayed mostly flat; there were 1,118 in February 2012.

Republicans have proposed slashing the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) budget by 20 percent, and have argued that OSHA should be focusing on enforcing penalties for killing an employee.

Republicans consider enforcement of OSHA standards ‘job-killing’ regulation. On the other hand, a lack of enforcement, decreased inspections, and an even smaller budget for regulation actually lead to workplace deaths.

After Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin avoided some $67 million in taxes by renouncing his American citizenship shortly before the company made its initial public offering, Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Bob Casey (D-PA) introduced the “Ex-Patriot” Act. The bill would make former citizens subject to the capital gains tax on U.S. investments and bar those who renounce citizenship for tax purposes from reentering the country.

To American for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist, Schumer and Casey’s effort is akin to Nazism or South African apartheid, as The Hill reports:

“I think Schumer can probably find the legislation to do this. It existed in Germany in the 1930s and Rhodesia in the ’70s and in South Africa as well,” said Norquist. “He probably just plagiarized it and translated it from the original German.”

The Nazis infamously implemented a departure tax on Jews who tried to flee Germany before World War II. Schumer is Jewish.

“There’s already a law in the books George, but this is outrageous,” said Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH), referencing Saverin’s tax avoidance. “If it’s necessary, sure I would support [the Ex-Patriot Act].” In the last few months, several House Republicans have broken with Norquist and the Americans for Tax Reform anti-tax pledge, which says that signers will never agree to any tax increase, for any reason.