Washington, Apr. 19 (ANI): Eight out of ten Americans say they can”t trust Washington and they have little faith that the massive federal bureaucracy can solve the nation”s ills.

According to a Pew Research Center survey, the poll released Sunday illustrates an ominous situation facing President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party as they struggle to maintain their comfortable congressional majorities in this fall”s elections.

The survey found that just 22 percent of those questioned say they can trust Washington almost always or most of the time and just 19 percent say they are basically content with it. Nearly half say the government negatively effects their daily lives, a sentiment that”s grown over the past dozen years.

Majorities in the survey call Washington too big and too powerful, and say it”s interfering too much in state and local matters.

The public is split over whether the government should be responsible for dealing with critical problems or scaled back to reduce its power, presumably in favor of personal responsibility.

About half say they want a smaller government with fewer services, compared with roughly 40 percent who want a bigger government providing more.

The public was evenly divided on those questions long before Obama was elected.

The poll was based on four surveys done from March 11 to April 11 on landline and cell phones. The largest survey, of 2,500 adults, has a margin of sampling error of 2.5 percentage points; the others, of about 1,000 adults each, has a margin of sampling error of 4 percentage points. (ANI)