It doesn't take too much Fox watching before you begin to wonder just what its proud motto, “Fair and Balanced,” is supposed to mean. The slogan is appropriate if your definition of “Fair and Balanced” includes using any justification, no matter how tenuous, to push your agenda. For example, today on America's Newsroom, anchor Martha MacCallum and Fox Business anchor Dagen McDowell used a new Rasmussen poll, which found that 51 percent of Americans believe the federal budget can be balanced through spending cuts alone, as a pretext to call for cuts in spending and Social Security. The fact that the popularity of a policy position has no bearing on whether that position is realistic didn't seem to discourage them.

MacCallum and McDowell also framed the entire issue as a spending problem, as if it weren't possible for deficits to result from a collapse in revenue, as opposed to increased expenditures.

From the November 18 edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom:

MacCALLUM: Well, a really interesting brand new poll shows that many Americans believe that the government can, in fact, cut deficits without raising anybody's taxes. I know it's a novel idea, but apparently 51 percent of you out there, according to Rasmussen, think that it is possible. Thirty-three percent say, “Nope, you're going to have to raise taxes to in order to tackle the deficit.” Sixteen percent are just on the fence. They have no idea how to solve this problem, and they're certainly not alone.

Dagen McDowell joins me. She is a Fox Business Network anchor. How are you?

McDOWELL: I'm great.

MacCALLUM: Good to see you. You know, I mean, I go back to the same point. Eventually, we're going to have to cut some meat from the bone, or we're going to completely bankrupt the country.

Here's our first problem. MacCallum presented the issue as one where we must cut spending or we will go bankrupt. Now, I never know what people mean when they say that the country is or will be “bankrupt.” The point, though, is that MacCallum is deciding for her viewers: Excess government spending is the problem -- a point that was immediately repeated, in even less ambiguous terms:

McDOWELL: Right. It comes down to spending cuts.

McDowell and MacCallum then pivoted, for some reason, to Social Security. McDowell mentioned that polls show that people don't want to cut Social Security, to which MacCallum responded, “Well, of course they don't. But, I mean, you look at those numbers. Eventually, we're going to have to tackle this or we're going to bankrupt our country. Is that not a fact?”

No. It isn't a fact. According to an August 6 report from the Economic Policy Institute, if nothing is done to shore up Social Security's finances, then around 2037, when the trust fund dries up, benefits “would have to be cut by an estimated 22%.” The EPI report says that “such an abrupt cut in benefits should certainly be avoided ... these benefits would still be larger than current benefits due to economic growth.” Furthermore, the report explained that Social Security is prohibited by law from borrowing, and that while expenditures are set to rise as baby boomers retire, they will eventually fall again, leveling off at around 1 percent of GDP higher than they are now.

So how did McDowell respond when MacCallum asked if it was a fact? “That's a fact,” she said. Obviously. From there, MacCallum and McDowell took a detour to praise Senate Republicans for agreeing to seek a ban on earmarks, a proposal that MacCallum claimed “says they're heading in the right direction.” They went on to rehash debunked arguments about Social Security's demographics:

MacCALLUM: I don't think anybody wants to cut Social Security from people who are actually receiving it now, who've been paying into it their whole lives. That is not what we're talking about here. But if in 2075, as the debt commission proposed, you raise the age to 69. And you look at life expectancy and you look at the original reason Social Security was even instituted, which was to help you know widows and orphans, there has to be some room in there to make changes to that system. It's onerous.

McDOWELL: And in that Wall Street Journal poll, 57 percent of people were uncomfortable with just raising the retirement age to 69 in 60 years.

MacCALLUM: I wonder how they would feel if they could use that money on their own? If they could invest some of that money -- that's been such a taboo idea. You know, “Oh, they're gonna ruin your money in the stock market.” But to have a little more control over their own Social Security fund.

McDOWELL: Are we going to deal with this problem today and make it ours and take care of it, or are we going to kick it down the road and make it our grandchildren's problems, or even in later generations? That's the question.

So that's their advice. Raise the retirement age and add private accounts. Never mind the fact that "[f]orty five percent of people over age 58 work at jobs that are physically demanding or have difficult work conditions." Or that “a significant part of the increase in life [expectancy] is between birth and age 20. Including declines in child and teen mortality exaggerate the increase in retirement length. Furthermore, much of the gains in life expectancy come during working years -- between 20 and retirement. This means that workers are not only experiencing longer retirements, but longer working lives as well.”

As if their one-sided and misguided dialogue wasn't enough, viewers were treated to information about, for some reason, the Bush tax cuts during the entire segment. The following text was shown on the screen:

• Bush tax cuts if allowed to expire: Top tax rate will rise from 35% to 39.6%
• Bush tax cuts if allowed to expire: Bottom tax rate will increase from 10% to 15%
• Bush tax cuts if allowed to expire: CBO 2011 deficit would fall to $1.07 trillion
• Bush tax cuts if extended: CBO: GDP in 2011 would be 0.6% to 1.7% higher
• Bush tax cuts upper tax bracket: Permanent extension of tax cuts: $700B over 10 yrs

So if the tax cuts expire, there's higher taxes and a trillion-dollar deficit, and if they're extended we get more growth. They report. You decide.

By the way, “straight news anchor” MacCallum pushed the same policies three days ago.

Moral of the story: Fox uses its favorite polling company to push its favorite policies. Tax cuts at the top, Social Security cuts for the rest of us. Sounds fair and balanced, right?