I'm confused.

I thought Fox News' beloved Tea Party movement was all about lower taxes. Yet last night Greta Van Susteren commiserated with former GOP senator, and current Fox News talker, Rick Santorum about a new tax study that claimed 47 percent of U.S. households don't pay federal income taxes because their incomes are too low or they qualify for earned income tax credits. (Most households do pay lots of other types taxes, though.)

The study received banner treatment at the right-wing Drudge Report (ROB THY NEIGHBOR: HALF OF HOUSEHOLDS PAY NO FED INCOME TAX), and in an AP article, a conservative from Heritage Foundation bemoaned that too many families were getting off easy:

“We have 50 percent of people who are getting something for nothing,” said Curtis Dubay, senior tax policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation.

That was certainly the theme on Fox News last night:

SANTORUM: Look, what we have is a situation that Thomas Jefferson warned us about from the very beginning. When you have -- when you reach the point where people feel like they don't have to pay anything and they're getting money out of the Treasury for nothing, then there's no end to the amount of government that people want.

From a purely philosophical perspective, wouldn't a study claiming that nearly half of U.S. households escape paying a federal income tax be good news for a political movement --as well as its chief media enabler--that rallies for lower taxes? Am I missing something here, or is Fox News' hypocrisy slip just showing again?

UPDATED: Glenn Beck, who pockets $30 million a year, is also very, very upset that more Americans aren't paying taxes.