President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order officially creating the Department of Government Efficiency, the cost-cutting initiative helmed by billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. The executive order included fresh details about DOGE’s goals and structure, such as a mandate to upgrade the government’s IT systems. 

Mr. Trump first announced DOGE in November with a statement that said the effort would “provide advice and guidance from outside of Government.” The goal, he added in November, would be to provide recommendations to “slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies.” 

Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in a November Wall Street Journal opinion article that they aimed to cut $500 billion in annual federal costs by targeting “expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended.”

But Mr. Trump’s executive order says that DOGE will in fact be housed within the executive branch, rather than operating as an outside advisory committee. The EO also states that an existing White […]