How battleship prestige starved the early US balanced fleet

Why was cruiser construction so low on the US Congress's pre-First World War building list?

Battleships carried political prestige, so Congress underfunded most other types until war exposed the shortage and forced mass emergency orders.

Cruisers were not uniquely low on the American building list; almost every supporting type lost out to battleships in the prewar political contest. That prestige-first policy left the Navy short of destroyers and other fleet auxiliaries, producing the wartime surge that created the four-stack destroyers and was later celebrated as an industrial achievement.