I know plenty of federal workers, and believe me, most of them are not like your local DMV stereotype. You may disagree about the government doing certain kinds of work, but the majority of federal workers I know seem to work at least as hard as their private industry counterparts.
I also know plenty of federal workers. And considering the massive, ever growing head-count in the federal workforce, the 800,000 figure might be *low* for the "DMV Stereo-Types". Now, to be fair, I work with (or try to get them working, as the case may be) federal employees on a weekly basis. I know full well there are great people working for Uncle-Sugar. But there are also a *SIGNIFICANT* number of dead-weight, unionized, ass-hats that are wastes of tax-payer money, as well as wastes of DNA. Folks who should absolutely be given the axe, but can't be fired - seemingly because they've somehow been fortunate not to have been caught committing a felony in the workplace (or whatever it takes to actually fire them). I would even go as far as estimating the ratio of producers to leechers is worse in the fed sector than in the commercial sector. Likely because the fed sector does not have to produce anything, nor turn a profit. All they *HAVE* to do is be polite, and even that's too much of a challenge for some of them.
But yes, it is absolutely true there are some good folks working for the govt.