The Biden administration cited the COVID-19 pandemic as justification for its $300 billion student loan-shifting program, continuing a pattern of mentioning the virus in some situations and ignoring it in others.

Biden’s Education Department said the Higher Education Relief Opportunity for Students, or HEROES, Act of 2003 gives it the power to waive student loans due to a national emergency, that emergency being COVID-19, and Biden was careful to reference the pandemic in his remarks about the program.