An emotional Sen. Linda Berglin, DFL-Minneapolis, Tuesday mourned the proposed budget cuts from DFL Gov. Mark Dayton.

In the midst of hearing a measure that would allow an exception to the hospital moratorium for a private psychiatric hospital, Berglin, long a legislative expert on human services and mental health issues asked some piercing questions about funding, then explained why.

"There is a need for the mental health services that are being eliminated in the governor's budget also. And those budget cuts are very painful to me to see them written on a piece of paper by a governor of my own party because I know how badly those services are needed," said Berglin. "The issue is how do we pay for them? And that is the issue I am raising in regard to this bill as well."

Berglin had not let other budget cutters off the hook either.

"There are people -- some of whom are sitting in this room -- who yell and scream every time the Medicaid budget goes up. Well, one of the reasons the Medicaid budget goes up is because there's more people on the Medicaid program who are being hospitalized and the Medicaid program is paying for it. And nobody's saying, 'Oh, well they must really need the care,' they are saying 'Oh, it's terrible because that our budget's going up,'" she said.