Americans divided on federalizing airport security

Americans are divided over whether security at airports should be handled by federal government employees or by private employees trained by the federal government, a new Ipsos-Reid poll suggests. The House is expected to debate the issue this week.

Forty-nine percent of respondents surveyed by the Ipsos-Reid polling firm last weekend said airline security workers should work for private companies, and 44 percent said they should be employees of the federal government.

Democrats said they preferred federal government employees by a 50 percent to 43 percent margin, and Republicans favored private employees by a 53 percent to 42 percent margin.

Meanwhile, another national poll suggests that trust in government overall continues to rise. In a CBS News/New York Times poll taken last week, a 45 percent plurality of respondents said the federal government could be trusted "most of the time" to do what's right, while 42 percent said that was the case only some of the time. Ten percent said they trusted Washington "just about always."

The question was last asked by CBS News in January, and a 64 percent majority then said they could trust the government to do what's right only some of the time.