Regardless of whether or not one personally enjoys the work one is doing, if one really is contributing to society, one should get fairly compensated for it.

Additional requirements not common in the private sector, such as rigorous drug testing, ethics codes, requirements on gift reporting, increased surveillance, etc., should come with additional benefits to compensate. Instead, government workers submit to these requirements and a substantial pay cut.

That's mostly because conservatives 1) desire tax cuts at any cost and 2) want to demolish the entire administrative state. The stability and consistency that comes with a well-funded civil servant class are an obstruction to their stated goals.