Rebecca Pheffer, 42, also reports she is better off and gives Obama some credit for that. But the Kansan also believes the health care law was flawed from the start. She is more inclined to give the president high marks for his comportment while in office: “President Obama and the first lady reflected grace not seen since the Kennedys. He handled himself in a way that is truly what the coined term ‘to be presidential’ means,” said Pheffer. (Her last name was Johnston in the video; Pheffer has since divorced.)

Rebecca Pheffer, center, hopes for a time “where everyone can feel validated and secure.” (Family Photo)

Pheffer has moved to a more rural community in Kansas. Looking for help paying the bills, she also joined the Army Reserves in 2009. Her comments suggest that, more than anything Obama enacted, those moves helped improve her economic situation. Moving “helped decrease living expenses and the community camaraderie is phenomenal. It has been a blessing for my children and I,” she told Roll Call. And her now-concluded military stint “helped supplement my income, as well as decreased some health care costs during my contract.”

In the 2008 video, Pheffer spoke of how her family was struggling back then to make ends meet. Her then-husband, Bryan Johnston, needed knee surgery, adding to their “tight” money situation. He had a torn ACL and meniscus, but “they put off the operation, to take care of other things,” candidate Obama said. Pheffer then described their bills as just “going up and up and up,” saying she couldn’t “remember a time when I didn’t have to worry about this stuff.” Obama launched into a lengthy description of policies he planned to enact to help people like Pheffer and her family.

Issues with the health care law

“This is where our snacks would go,” Pheffer said at one point in the video, leading a camera to a half-empty refrigerator. She pointed to its shelves, describing them as more empty than she would prefer and laying out her method of making sure her kids make do until the next grocery run. “If they know that this is it for them for the whole week then they will make it last longer,” she said, before providing a bleak assessment of getting by at the end of the George W. Bush administration: “I think everybody feels the same way that they’d like to see an end in sight to all the worry and the chaos of everyday living, trying to make ends meet.”

Unlike the Stuarts, Pheffer, who gets her coverage through work, has issues with the Obama’s replumbing of the health system.