Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney has chosen Congressman Paul Ryan, known for advocating deep cuts in federal spending, as his running mate, his campaign announced yesterday.

Ryan is a creature of Washington, elected to the House at just 28

The selection was first made public in a brief email message sent by the campaign to reporters saying that Ryan was Romney’s pick for vice-president.

A statement shortly afterward said: “Mitt Romney today announced Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential running mate.”

It did not elaborate except to add brief biographical data about Ryan, the powerful chairman of the House budget committee and a native of the Midwestern state of Wisconsin.

Interest in Ryan has surged in recent weeks, with conservative pundits openly urging Romney to pick him in large part because of his House-backed plan to lower taxes, slash federal spending and overhaul entitlement programmes like Medicaid, the government-run insurance safety net for the poor which Ryan wants to convert into a voucher-like system to save money.

The conservative-leaning Wall Street Journal wrote in an editorial earlier last week that Ryan “best exemplifies the nature and stakes of this election,” and that choosing him would show voters that Romney was not shying away from engaging in monumental debates.

“Mr Romney’s best chance for victory is to make this a big election over big issues,” the Journal wrote.

For months political observers had speculated that Romney would make a safe choice, with attention focusing on Senator Rob Portman of the crucial state of Ohio with considerable Washington experience that Romney lacks, or former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, a Washington outsider with blue-collar roots.

But in picking the wonkish Ryan for the most important political decision of his campaign, Romney made a bold move, choosing someone who could energise the conservative base and sharpen his challenge against President Barack Obama.

The Republican flagbearer seeks to reverse a weeks-long negative trend to his campaign and boost sagging poll numbers that show Obama extending his lead on Romney nationally and holding on to leads in most of the swing states.

But the choice is fraught with political peril. Obama and his Democrats have demonised the Ryan plan as giving tax breaks to millionaires while gutting much-needed federal programmes and placing excessive financial pressures on middle-class Americans.

It also includes a plan to semi-privatise Medicare, the government health insurance programme.

Ryan’s budget plan has made him a polarising figure, and some experts have said he would not help Romney much among a crucial demographic: undecided and independent voters.

Ryan is a creature of Washington, elected to the House at just 28, and while that may give Romney a much-needed inside look at the workings of Capitol Hill, Congress is currently suffering from approval ratings stuck at an all-time low.

But the two men have some commonalities that may work well on the campaign trail, where Ryan has already served as an able surrogate stumping for Romney in Wisconsin, which is currently trending towards Obama.

The pair share an obsession over data and number-crunching – Ryan in his budget plans and Romney in his bottom-line business analyses. And while Ryan has a long-term commitment toward changing the country’s fiscal trajectory, Romney has shown a steadfastness in his years-long quest for the White House.

The presumptive Republican nominee’s campaign had said the announcement could come at any time, but many experts were expecting it to be this week or even the week after, in the run-up to the Republican convention in late August.

They figured Romney might want to hold off until after the conclusion of the Olympics in London this weekend, when he and his wife Ann, who attended the Games, would have time to discuss the decision face to face.

Ann Romney has since returned and flew to Norfolk last Friday evening with her husband.

Paul Ryan profile

By choosing wonkish budget hawk Paul Ryan as his running mate, White House hopeful Mitt Romney is gambling that voters want nothing less than a showdown over the nation’s fiscal future and the role of government in American life.

Bucking conventional wisdom that Romney would opt for safety over risk, for wooing independent voters over firing up the base, the Republican flagbearer has chosen a conservative hero who is a lightning rod for controversy.

Ryan, the serious and impassioned yet even-tempered fiscal pitbull who has emerged as a star in the House of Representatives’ Republican caucus who have embraced his plan to slash spending, became the clear choice for many influential conservatives seeking a bold running mate for Romney.

They got it in Ryan, a seven-term congressman from the midwestern state of Wisconsin.

While a clear Washington insider who at age 42 has already worked on Capitol Hill nearly half his life, the House Budget Committee chairman is pledging a revolutionary, once-a-generation debate about the direction of the economy.

“We are offering the nation a better way forward,” Ryan said in March shortly before the House approved his budget proposal by 228 votes to 191, with all Democrats and 10 Republicans opposed.

Ryan was born and raised in Janesville, in Wisconsin’s southeast corner where he still lives with his wife and three children.

His father died when he was in high school, and the loss turned the young Ryan into an introspective, serious student who held odd jobs and joined the Latin and history clubs in school.

“I grew up really fast,” he said in a recent New Yorker magazine profile.

In the early 1990s he worked for a Wisconsin senator, then as a speech writer for Republican Jack Kemp, who was the vice-presidential candidate in 1996.

In 1998, at age 28, Ryan was elected to Congress, and rose quickly in the Republican ranks.

By 2004, he set about trying to privatise social security, the government safety net for retirees, and while his bid stalled, it presaged the caustic debates over entitlement programmes that were to follow.

While Ryan is beloved by core conservatives, and his being on the ticket helps assuage their suspicions about Romney and his policy reversals on issues like abortion and gay rights, some experts wonder whether Romney is courting the right voters in an election many say will go down to the wire in November. “Romney’s got to focus on winning over the swing voters in key states, and I don’t think Paul Ryan will help in any way,” said politics professor Alan Abramowitz of Emory University.