Vice President Joe Biden bizarrely employed quotes spoken by President Kennedy 50 years ago to slam Republicans today for opposing tax increases and proposing reductions in federal spending.

The Kennedy quotes, though, had nothing to do with today’s situation, or anything like it. Biden plucked JFK quotes seemingly out of thin air to fit his argument of the day.

Here is Biden today as quoted by Politico:

“Just as there were naysayers in 1961, there are naysayers in 2011 – not only in the public at large, but also in the political system. They say we can’t afford to invest. I say we can’t fail to invest.”

Biden then incongruously blurted: “we would have never reached the moon”, before randomly reciting a quote from  Kennedy’s 1961 inaugural address: “In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than in mine, rest the final success or failure of our course.”

Mr. Biden never fails to confuse and entertain.

Here is a JFK quote directly pertinent to the debt and tax issues of today.  It was spoken to the Economic Club of New York by President Kennedy in 1962, and appropriately cited earlier this month by House Speaker John Boehner (R) in his remarks to the very same club:

‘Our true choice is not between tax reduction, on the one hand, and the avoidance of large federal deficits on the other. It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our [needs] keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget — just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits.’

In other words, the only way to grow our economy sufficiently to pay our debts is to keep tax rates low.

Then 20-year-old Biden must have missed that speech.

UPDATE: How could I have neglected to include this terrific irony? Neil Armstrong today writes that President Obama is killing off the space program.  Say it ain’t so, Joe!