Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), House Budget Committee chair, is many things: smart, energetic, articulate, charismatic. A nice guy. And a big government guy too, based on the budget he's championing. Economist John Tamny makes a good case for this in a column on RealClearMarkets. According to Tamny, Ryan's budget, at best, only slows the expansion of the leviathan that is the federal government."Far from a major reduction in the size and scope of government, Ryan's alleged lurch to fiscal sanity involves returning us to 2008 levels of spending; the very levels that so angered a less organized Republican base not long ago such that they handed the keys to the Democrats... [H]igh levels of spending loom large, and a return to 2008 levels reveals a Republican leadership still well out of touch with the an increasingly skeptical base."Ryan's budget outline, which the House passed on Friday by a vote of 235-193, shows federal outlays increasing from $3.5 trillion in fiscal 2012 to $4...(Read Full Post)