The devil is in the details of President Bush's plan to curb the nation's escalating home foreclosures by freezing for five years the introductory "teaser" interest rates on many subprime loans. Borrowers who qualify—Bush estimates that up to 1.2 million might be eligible—will also have the option of refinancing into a new mortgage or switching to a loan insured by the Federal Housing Administration.

Lenders had already been working out deals with strapped subprime borrowers, but only a small number of homeowners have been able to renegotiate their loans. Bush's plan aims to speed up these deals by laying out criteria to help lenders determine who is eligible for help. "We hope that these guidelines will be adopted as reasonable and customary standard practice across the entire servicing industry," said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who helped broker the deal with other regulators and mortgage lenders. Here are six things you should know about the plan:

It will benefit only a small group of subprime borrowers. ...

Borrowers must ask for help. ...

The plan is not a "silver bullet." ...

Questions remain about how it will work. ...

This is an industry-led deal, not a government bailout. ...

The plan will become a hot political issue. This is a bold step for an administration that has, until recently, insisted that the task of refinancing mortgage loans should be handled on a case-by-case basis. "There are obviously significant limitations on what they're willing to do, but I don't think we would have gotten this plan out of the administration that came into office in 2001," says Ellen Seidman, former director of both the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., who now heads a project at the New America Foundation. As the presidential election nears, the health of the economy—and how candidates will deal with the mortgage crisis—is gaining political importance. Some Democratic candidates argued that the plan doesn't go far enough and proposed their own plans. Hillary Clinton, for example, proposed an across-the-board rate freeze and a moratorium on foreclosures. John Edwards said he would freeze interest rates for seven years. ...

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