People in upper management only speak in dollars. If you can't speak in dollars you literally can't speak their language. They shouldn't have asked management

People in upper management only speak in dollars. If you can't speak in dollars you literally can't speak their language. They shouldn't have asked management for money, they should have presented management with two alternatives: pay $x now to upgrade network infrastructure, or pay $y later in rush fees, IT overtime, and customer loss due to degraded UX. Then you let them make the decision. It's absolutely possible the business was in a temporary cash crunch or needed the money to get a more important revenue-generating initiative past the finish line, and eating the higher costs later might make more sense to the business.