The Congressional point of view was based on not knowing or caring about the advancing state of the art in naval warfare, yes. Congress didn't ultimately care that they were being "penny wise and pound foolish" because the cut-down, lower-tonnage battleship designs they kept forcing the Navy to adopt were vastly less capable both in absolute and relative terms.
It was pretty much, "Every two years, the Navy comes to us with ridiculously big and expensive budget requests for new battleships, we tell them to make do with less, and they grumble about it but do so. Yet instead of taking a hint and coming up with a sensibly smaller battleship in the first place, EVERY TIME they come back they've got a bigger ship."
It was pretty much, "Every two years, the Navy comes to us with ridiculously big and expensive budget requests for new battleships, we tell them to make do with less, and they grumble about it but do so. Yet instead of taking a hint and coming up with a sensibly smaller battleship in the first place, EVERY TIME they come back they've got a bigger ship."