Or something.

WASHINGTON (AP) — An aggressive President Barack Obama declared Wednesday that congressional Republicans are more interested in dividing the country than in strengthening the economy and accused them of working to overturn advances achieved during his presidency.

“They’re more focused on turning back the clock,” he told a prominent women’s legal group.

The president’s criticism reiterated complaints about Republican opposition to his jobs bill and the health care law he shepherded through last year. But he tailored his comments to the largely female audience of the Women’s Law Center, a legal advocacy group that is friendly to his administration.

He said Republicans want to overturn the country’s new health care law and would let health insurance companies once again charge women higher rates and prevent millions of women from obtaining tests such as pap smears and breast exams. And he pointed to the defeat of a proposal that would have protected teachers against layoffs, noting that three-quarters of them are women.

“Lifting up women lifts up our economy and our country,” Obama said. ” Unfortunately, not everybody in Washington seems to feel the same way.”

The dinner honored women who were Freedom Riders in 1961, riding buses across the south to test a U.S. Supreme Court decision banning segregation in interstate transportation.

“The Freedom Riders had faith that America could still be perfected,” Obama said. “And it is only because they did that I am able to stand here as President of the United States.

The last time the president spoke to the women’s legal group was in 2005, when he was a new senator from Illinois. Since then, he said, “our daughters live in a world that is fairer and more equal than it was six years ago.”