'This Week' Transcript: GOP Vice Presidential Nominee Paul Ryan

NEW YORK, SEPT. 9, 2012— -- STEPHANOPOULOS: Good morning and welcome to "This Week."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MICHELLE OBAMA, FIRST LADY: The president of the United States of America.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Obama on offense.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The path we offer may be harder, but it leads to a better place, and I'm asking you to choose that future.

STEPHANOPOULOS: The president and his party make their pitch.

FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: We believe that we're all in this together is a far better philosophy than you're on your own.

SEN. JOHN KERRY, D-MASS.: Ask Osama bin Laden if he's better off now than he was four years ago.

VICE PRESIDENT JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.: This man has courage in his soul, compassion in his heart, and a spine of steel.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Did Obama convince voters he deserves to be rehired? Will Friday's sobering jobs report-

MITT ROMNEY, GOP PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It's just simply unimaginable.

STEPHANOPOULOS: -- undermine his message? With less two months to go, what will define the final sprint and break this election deadlock? We'll ask our headliner, Congressman Paul Ryan, in his first Sunday interview since becoming Mitt Romney's running mate.

RYAN: We will win this debate.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Plus, Newark Mayor Cory Booker and Tea Party favorite Senator Rand Paul join our powerhouse roundtable, with George Will, Cokie Roberts, and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman of the New York Times.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Hello again. The conventions are done, debates are coming, and new polls show a bit of a bounce for the Democrats. But Friday's mediocre jobs report may tamp that down. So President Obama was fighting hard in Florida yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: When our opponents say this nation is in decline, they are dead wrong. This is America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Here now with a response, just 58 days from the final votes, the Republican nominee for vice president, Congressman Paul Ryan.

Good morning, Congressman. How are you doing today?

RYAN: Hey, good morning, George. Good to be with you.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So the president, I think, was quoting you there. Do you stand by your belief that America is a country in decline?

RYAN: I think President Obama has placed us on a path to decline. Four budgets, $4 trillion deficits, 23 million people struggling to find work, the highest poverty rates in a generation, nearly one out of six Americans in poverty.

And we just learned on Friday that it's the 43rd month of unemployment above 8 percent. For every person who got a job last month, nearly four stopped looking for work. That's not a good direction. That's the wrong direction.

I mean, George, we have to create 150,000 jobs every month just to keep up with population growth, and we didn't even do that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You know, you and --

RYAN: It's on the wrong path.

STEPHANOPOULOS: -- you and Governor Romney are promising --

RYAN: Go ahead.

STEPHANOPOULOS: -- to create 12 million new jobs. But that's only about half as many jobs as Governor Romney has said would be produced by a normal -- quote, normal recovery, and it's almost exactly the number that private sector economists say will be created no matter who is president or what the policies are. So that seems to be a concession that your plans won't improve the economy from its current path.