I have responsibilities, deadlines, and plenty to do. I'm accountable to people and have others accountable to me. It's a real job in every sense of the word, but it's a completely different culture than the private sector where everything I did was to maximize my company's profit. Budgets are determined once a year and people know if their expected projects are budgeted or not. I'm not trying to make money for anyone, rather meet the expectations of multiple departments based off of their budgets.
It's pretty ignorant to think that all people in government aren't actually working.