By Warren Wolfe

Sen. Linda Berglin, DFL-Minneapolis, said Thursday that she'll recommend the Legislature ratify the governor's unallotment of about $226 million from health and human service programs, leaving about $10 million in emergency food and support programs untouched.

"I don't think any providers have gone out of business yet," she said, although most of the cuts have not taken effect yet.

Berglin heads the Senate Health and Human Services Budget Division and sponsor of new legislation to cut $114 million from state spending this biennium to help balance the budget.

She chided Gov. Tim Pawlenty for threatening to veto her bill and a similar one in the House even before both bills were passed this week. Among Pawlenty's objections are measures that would increase some health-care provider surcharges and expand the richer state-federal Medicaid in Minnesota to cover very poor Minnesotans now in a stripped-down state-operated program.

"We've paid for [the Medicaid expansion] in our bill," said Berglin, flanked by three other DFL senators at a briefing Thursday morning. Expanding Medicaid to cover very poor childless adults would bring in about $1 billion in federal money over three years, but the state would have to match it.

Families USA, she said that the Medicaid expansion would "create 20,200 jobs, generate $2.2 billion in state business activity and reflect an additional $886 million in salaries and wages" over the next three years. In 2014, the federal government would pick up the entire costs for a number of years.

"We're being financially responsible," she said. "We've made some cuts and we've added some things, and I think we've done very well for Minnesotans, under some very difficult circumstances."