The bond market is deteriorating slightly this afternoon as investors continue to wait for the Treasury department to announce near term borrowing needs and also to provide insight into how they plan to tinker with the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to increase its effectiveness.  Republicans made news this morning with their demands that the stimulus program include a provision to subsidize mortgage rates at a level around 4% for new purchases.  It is expected that such a program would cost $300 billion.  Given that mortgage rates are already at near historic lows though, Democrats in Congress and the Obama administration may not want to allocate $300 billion (fully 1/3 of the stimulus package) to this effort.  They have a long list of jobs creation programs they would like to fund and 1 line item taking up $300 billion and pushing out other items may not make it past the idea stage.  It is actually not a good sign for the prospects of lower mortgage rates that the Republicans are promoting the program.  When both Republicans and Democrats are in front of press cameras pushing the idea, its prospects will be much brighter.