If Lege can pay $735 million for border boondoggle, why can't they scrounge $220 million from the couch cushions to eliminate Driver Responsiblity surcharge?

The 84th Texas Legislature should be the time and place to finally eliminate the Orwellian-named Driver Responsibility surcharge, that bane of low-income drivers which has taken driver licenses from more than 2 million Texans for nonpayment, more than 1.3 million of whom remain unlicensed. Texas drivers owe billions in unpaid surcharges, most of which no one believes can ever be collected. All of these are folks who've already paid their traffic tickets but were then hit with an extra, three-year civil penalty that most Texans aren't even aware exists until it's assessed against them.

Many Texas legislators by now are keenly aware of the problem, and if they're not, their staffers working constituent service are. Plus, this year the state enjoys billions in extra revenue (though admittedly there are many state needs competing for the money). So if there was ever a time in recent memory when it might be politically feasible to get rid of the program, on its face this would appear to be the year.

Presently the Driver Responsibility surcharge sends about $55 million per year to Texas trauma hospitals and a like amount to the general revenue fund. So if legislators want to abolish it, they must find at least $220 million to fill the budget hole.

That sounds like a lot until you realize Gov. Greg Abbott yesterday proposed to spend $735 million on redundant border security - approximately triple what the Lege budgeted in the last biennium. Abbott wants to add 500 DPS troopers to the state's border contingent and keep the National Guard there until they're fully deployed.

So if it's that easy to find an extra half billion to tack onto border security spending, it should be possible to find $220 million, even if it meant deploying 300 troopers to the Valley instead of 500. But really, even that tradeoff isn't necessary. The state has extra money beyond the governor's border security promises, if only the Legislature and Greg Abbot prioritized the surcharge issue as much.

The state gains virtually nothing from border deployments but a nine-figure budget line item - the National Guard aren't really allowed to do anything and DPS' roadblock program got shut down and is unlikely to be authorized by the Legislature. So really all they can do is drive around giving traffic tickets and hoping they inadvertently stumble across a drug runner, as though there aren't other parts of the state which could use help from DPS with traffic enforcement. The Texas border was the safest area of the state before DPS ever began the "surge," so it's hard to credit calm in the area with any great state success.

I get that the $735 million has more to do with primary politics than public policy. But I see no good reason legislative budget writers couldn't make it $515 million, spend the other $220 million to wipe out the Driver Responsibility surcharge, and still get to claim in 2016 that they sufficiently thumbed their noses at President Obama. In the meantime, they can solve a huge problem for 1.3 million Texas drivers without licenses and millions more suffering under the yoke of onerous, harmful, counterproductive, and arguably unconstitutional civil surcharges.

Public safety wouldn't be harmed at all - in fact arguably it would be improved - and legislators seeking re-election would have the added benefit of having performing a massive mitzvah for a millions of surcharge-owers and the 1.3 million who've lapsed.