You are working out your options well…just be sure to recognize the implicit costs and trade-offs.
For example, to pay for spending 4 years in a big-name school, surrounded by other ambitious high achievers, with a goal to get to Capital HIll, you will then go back to Texas and work for 4 years. Will you want to go back home for 4 years? what if a summer internship leads to a great job that would take you the direction you want to go- but it’s not in Texas / doesn’t pay enough to both survive & make your debt payments? Or, if you do go back to Texas, once your debt is 75% paid off would you move someplace more exciting? or do your MBA at UT-A? Then take your new MBA and your 4 years of experience and move to DC? Could you afford to do that?
No matter what, though, UT will not have the same type of quality of life as the fancy NE school- b/c they are very different environments.