During a press briefing today, Press Secretary Jay Carney called out John Boehner and the GOP for the bogus reasons behind their refusal to raise taxes on millionaires.

Carney said,

On another note, before I take your questions, I just happened to be reading before I came back here to speak with you an account of an encounter that the Speaker of the House had with reporters this morning, and I had to laugh because he was asked, the Speaker was, about whether or not he could name any small businesses that were affected by a surtax on millionaires and billionaires, the likes of which the Senate Democrats have put forward as a pay-for for the payroll tax cut extension and expansion.

He said a lot but he didn’t name any, and the fact of the matter is, it’s more evidence that the number-one talking point of Republicans in refusing to ask millionaires and billionaires to pay just a little bit more so that 160 million working Americans can get a tax break is bogus, even by their definition of small businesses, which allows for investment advisors and law partners and others who file their small business — their business income under personal income at more than a million dollars — it’s still fewer than 1 percent of all small businesses.

So I just urge everyone who reports on this, when they dutifully repeat the pushback from Republicans about why doing what the American public overwhelmingly supports is not a good thing to do, that their number-one reason for that is false. Just not backed up by the facts.

The Obama administration is trying to put pressure on the media to actually report the facts about increasing taxes on millionaires and billionaires, but as we all know the mainstream media has no time for facts. The point is that when the media actually pushes the Republicans about why they don’t support raising taxes on millionaires and billionaires, they can’t come up with any specific examples that would be hurt by the increase.