From Tuesday night’s Fox News All-Stars.

On whether Mike Huckabee will enter the 2012 race:

I’m not surprised by the fact that Huckabee appears not to want to run. Maybe he is a normal guy with a normal psychology. He has a great program on TV. He’s popular. He is making money and building his dream house in Florida. Why would you want all the tsuris [troubles], as they say in the South, you get from running?

On the report that government transfer payments now make up 18 percent of U.S. personal income, the highest level since records began being kept in 1929:

In ’29 we were a younger country. We now have 10,000 boomers a day retiring and will for 20 years. So it’s demographic, which is inexorable. No way to control it. And we are a society that of course is going to support the elderly.
And of course it’s health care, which is an even greater expense. And the reason is our medical technology.
You know, in the old days you died of pneumonia or heart attack. It’s a terrible way to go, but it’s — from a societal perspective — it’s cheap. Today you live into old age and … die of cancers and dementias. They are extremely expensive — [requiring] very intensive type of care. That’s also inexorable and there’s no way anyone is going to reverse that. We welcome the medical advances.
But the costs are astronomical. And that’s why we are looking at a cliff — transfer payments [of] 18 percent now. They will only increase. And unless we find a way to deal with the health-care issue, we’re going to go over a cliff. And that’s why the Ryan proposal and the counterproposals that are being brooded about are so important today.