“I think we ought to raise it, because frankly, our party is all about more jobs and better pay, and I think communicating that is important to us.”

— Mitt Romney, quoted by the Washington Post, urging Republicans to increase the minimum wage.

Rick Santorum said that the Republican Party’s hard-line stance against minimum wage increases “makes no sense,” the Huffington Post reports.

Said Santorum: “I don’t understand. This is one I don’t get. If the Republicans want to go out and say, ‘We’re against the minimum wage,’ then go out and make the argument to the American public and 80-some percent of the American public believes we should have the minimum wage. But they’re making arguments about why we shouldn’t have any increase.”

Wonk Wire notes a stronger than expected jobs report in which the unemployment rate fell to 6.3%.

Reactions to the jobs report suggest it’s a weird one.

Wonk Wire notes that if not for Obamacare, Q1 economic growth would have been negative.

“The U.S. economy slowed in the first quarter to one of the weakest paces of the five-year recovery as the frigid winter appeared to have curtailed business investment and weakness overseas hurt exports,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Wonk Wire: The rise in low wage jobs

A new HuffPost/YouGov poll finds that 44% of Americans think poor people are poor mostly because of a lack of opportunities, while only 30% said it’s mostly because of their individual failings.

“While Democrats and independents in the new survey were more likely to think the rich, poor and unemployed got where they are mostly due to outside circumstances, Republicans in the poll largely said the opposite. They tended to think the poor are poor because of individual failings, rather than lack of opportunities (48% to 23%), and that they have a poor work ethic rather than good jobs being unavailable to them (49% to 21%).”

Wonk Wire: Phyllis Schlafly says women won’t find husbands if paid the same as men.

The U.S. economy began growing again in June 2009, but Wonk Wire notes a majority of Americans still think we’re stuck in a recession.

“Five Senate Democrats and five Republicans unveiled a deal on extending expired unemployment insurance benefits for five months, which should be enough to overcome a GOP filibuster and get the package out of the Senate later this month,” Roll Call reports.

Politico: “The behind-the-scenes horse-trading was so furious that the deal was not finalized until minutes before the 4:15 p.m. announcement. Many senators were unaware that their colleagues had just struck an agreement on jobless aid that has evaded the Senate for weeks.”

Wonk Wire: Only one country recovered from the financial crisis faster than the United States. 

Speaker John Boehner “is so against raising the minimum wage that he once said he would rather commit suicide than vote for a ‘clean’ increase,” The Hill reports.

Boehner made the comment in a 1996 interview: “I’ll commit suicide before I vote on a clean minimum-wage bill.”

First Read: “Politically, the CBO report suggests that passing a minimum-wage hike won’t be easy this year. Republicans can use the report to push back against Democrats demanding the increase. Of course, there’s a potential compromise here: Like we saw in 1996, the White House and the GOP-led Congress could reach an agreement to increase the minimum wage but also provide protections for businesses — as a way to soften any threat of job losses. Then again, compromise hasn’t been an easy thing either these last few years. However, there is a danger here for Republicans, too: They don’t want repeat the Mitt Romney mistake of just looking out for the concerns of business owners.”

Wonk Wire: Will an increase in the minimum wage really hurt jobs? A test case of the restaurant industry suggests it won’t.

“The costly $787 billion spending bill that President Barack Obama signed into law soon after taking office boosted the economy and helped avoid another Great Depression, the White House said in a status report on Monday’s fifth anniversary of the law’s enactment,” the AP reports.

“Republican leaders in Congress took note of the anniversary, too, but argued that the bill spent too much for too little in return.”

Wonk Wire has a report card.

“I believe it is immoral for this country to have as a policy extending long-term unemployment to people rather than us working on creation of jobs.”

— Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), quoted by the Washington Post.

Roll Call: “Senate Democratic leaders plan to again try to extend unemployment insurance after Republicans blocked their latest attempt Thursday.”

“Democratic leaders came up a single vote short of overcoming a GOP filibuster. The final tally was 58-40, short of the 60-vote threshold needed, after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid switched his voted to preserve his right to reconsider the measure.”

New York Times: “Democrats hope to turn the issue into an election-year cudgel and have been blaming Republicans for ignoring people who are out of work. Republicans have balked at that as political smoke.”

A new NBC/Marist poll of Americans’ “view of the national economy and their own finances has uncovered a paradox: While nearly two-thirds think the country is in a recession or going in the wrong direction, the vast majority believe their personal prospects will improve or stay the course. A current of individual optimism — the highest level detected since 2009 — runs through the results of the survey, despite evidence that millions of Americans, especially those in lower income brackets, are struggling to balance their budgets. And yet that individual optimism is trumped by political pessimism of the country’s situation as a whole.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) “broke publicly with the White House Wednesday on trade policy, instantly imperiling two major international trade deals and punching a hole in one piece of the economic agenda the president outlined in his State of the Union address a day earlier,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Said Reid: “I’m against fast track. I think everyone would be well-advised just not to push this right now.”

“The move spells trouble for two sets of complicated talks, one with the European Union and the other with countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Both deals likely would have required such a ‘fast track’ approval to clear the Congress. The U.S.’s negotiating partners wouldn’t likely commit to a final agreement that could be unpopular back home without assurances that it couldn’t be modified by U.S. lawmakers.”

New York Times: “The best-known Republicans speaking out on poverty and opportunity have presidential ambitions, among them Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). Influential conservative economists and columnists have spoken up as well.”

“While their comments suggest the two parties agree mainly on the problem, not the remedies, some Republicans and Democrats see a chance, if small, for compromises — perhaps on tax policy, education and job-training initiatives, even the federal minimum wage.”

Said GOP strategist Vin Weber: “The president could move the ball. And he doesn’t have to move it from a dead start. He’s got a little bit of movement on the right.”