By The Associated Press

Published: Friday, October 12, 2012, 7:19 p.m.
Updated: Saturday, October 13, 2012

WASHINGTON — Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan is a fiscal conservative, champion of small government and critic of federal handouts. But as a congressman in Wisconsin, Ryan lobbied for tens of millions of dollars on behalf of his constituents for the kinds of largesse he's now campaigning against, according to an Associated Press review of 8,900 pages of correspondence between Ryan's office and more than 70 executive branch agencies.

For 12 years in the House, Ryan wrote to federal agencies supporting expansion of food stamps in his Wisconsin district. He supported city officials and constituents who sought stimulus grants, federally guaranteed business loans, grants to invest in green technology and money under the health care law he opposes.

On the campaign trail, Ryan has called those kinds of handouts big-government overreaching. Yet the AP's review showed that he sought stimulus funding on behalf of residents and at one point told federal regulators that cutting a stimulus grant in his district at the 11th hour would be “economically devastating.”

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