And now they are like other bad organizations (e.g., police departments that have a history of shooting unarmed people) in the respect that nobody wants to be associated with them, so they can only recruit from the bottom.

They also don't get paid when we have budget legislation. Who would want to work in a place like that?

Paying more for a job already designed to attract terrible people will still attract the same terrible people, it will just make them richer. Again, see police departments.

You can see a different sort of example in teaching: teachers put up with terrible pay for a long time, but now they're quitting in droves because of terrible work conditions and lack of emotional fulfillment.

You have to change the nature of the job from something designed around theater and blustering to something actually useful. The pay is never the problem, it's that the jobs are bullshit. Although once the jobs are no longer bullshit, we should probably pay them better.