Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the US Government-controlled mortgage giants, will pay $210 million (£141 billion) in retention bonuses over the next 18 months.

The lenders are overseen by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) after making $108 billion in losses last year and being taken into Government conservatorship.

Fannie Mae's disclosure last month that it planned to pay almost $5 million in bonuses to its top four executives riled lawmakers, who were already furious over $165 million windfalls for about 400 workers at AIG's troubled financial products business.

Today's revelations of the payments to be made to ordinary workers are almost certain to cause anger in Congress, which is considering legislation to tax bonuses paid by companies that have received federal bailouts.

In a letter to Senator Charles Grassley, James Lockhart, director of the FHFA, spelt out the bonuses being paid to 7,600 employees at the lenders over 18 months to early 2010.

Mr Lockhart said that about $51 million of payments were made to workers late last year, according to The Wall Street Journal, which has seen the letter. The rest of the cash would be distributed this year and early next year.

At Freddie Mac, 4,057 workers would be eligible for payouts, of which 92 would receive $100,000 or more. One Freddie worker would be paid more than $675,000 to retain his or her services.

The letter said that 3,545 Fannie employees would be eligible for retention bonuses, of which 121 will get $100,000 or more. The maximum payout at Fannie will be $705,000.

Barney Frank, the Democrat who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, has previously said that the bonuses should be cancelled. But in his letter, Mr Lockhart argues that the payments were vital for keeping valuable employees.

"It is not realistic to expect that experienced and highly skilled employees will indefinitely continue to work as hard as they have if we do not provide reasonable incentives," he wrote. Workers' stock options, previously used as rewards, are now worthless, and their normal bonus schemes have been scrapped.

Fannie and Freddie loan or guarantee half of America's $12 trillion mortgage market but made losses on sub-prime loans. They are propped up by the Government, which has put aside $200 billion to support the lenders.

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