Dear Harry: My employer has cut us back to four days a week in a program called "save the jobs." As a result, it's getting very hard to keep up my payments. The payments on the mortgage are $1,434. My monthly income is $4,100. I heard that one of the new anti-depression laws provides for a mortgage-modification deal if the payment is more than 30 percent of my monthly before-tax income. Is this the case? If so, how do I go about getting in on the deal?

What Harry says: The plan calls for a reduction of your payments by your lender to 38 percent of your income, with the Treasury subsidizing enough more to get your payments down to 31 percent (not 30 percent). Since you're already below the 38 percent, the Treasury will get your payments down to $1,271, even if this means cutting your interest rate down to as low as 2 percent or increasing the term to 40 years. The new rate will stay in effect for the next five years. After that, it can be raised up to 1 percent a year until it reaches the rate for conforming loans at that time. To add icing to the cake, you can get a bonus up front of as much as $1,500 and an additional $1,000 a year for five years to reduce your principal. *