Exactly correct. This is the common procedure for the bulk-commercial ship business, so much more so with highly complex warships. The scrapper is actually taking a big risk - their only revenue is the scrap steel, and the market for that is unpredictable. Just because building the thing now would cost $billions, all it is now, for DoD purposes, is a useless hunk of metal.
Useless hunk of metal? Not quite.
Modern US Navy aircraft carriers have only two means of ultimate disposal: scrapping in a US ship breaker’s yard or being sunk in the very deep ocean. The intention is to deny access to their methods of construction by our potential enemies since they incorporate lessons learned over nearly a century of building and operating this ship class; lessons sometimes learned at considerable cost in battle.
Here is a link to the USS America, one of the USS Kitty Hawk’s class sisters. She was scuttled in over 16,000 feet of water in 2005 after being subjected to four weeks of underwater and above water explosive tests:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_America_(CV-66)?wprov=sfti1
This is a very lengthy article and there is no hyperlinked index. Scroll directly to the bottom of the entry then scroll up to the section labeled Post Decommissioning Service to read about the 2005 tests off of Cape Hatteras and her subsequent scuttling.
A final note. Contract law requires something of value be exchanged for payment. The $1.00 notional sale price is required to create a contractual relationship between the seller (US government) and the buyer (commercial ship breaker). By doing this, the buyer becomes bound by the terms of the sale which, in addition to the various US environmental regulations, probably include specific restrictions on access to the ship breaker’s yard and to construction details that might be uncovered during the demolition process.