> Brookings and the American Enterprise Institute claim to have hatched a bipartisan consensus plan for reducing poverty. As exciting as that sounds, the details of the plan, unfortunately, won't be available until David Brooks unveils them at an event on December 3rd.

This is really all you need to read. He's attacking strawmen for the rest of the article, because the actual Brookings/AEI report is more detailed and specific. You can find it here: http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility-memos/posts/2....