A Washington Weekend Unlike Any Other

WASHINGTON â€" For law enforcement officials here, it was a fairly uneventful inauguration weekend.

But even with smaller crowds and a diminished level of excitement than four years ago, life in Washington was still upended.

On weekends, the areas around the White House and Capitol, populated by large office buildings, are typically quiet. But as President Obama was taking the oath of office on Sunday inside the White House, the surrounding streets were closed by the police or filled with bumper-to-bumper traffic, drivers honking in frustration.

The National Mall, usually dotted with tourists, felt more like a state fair or a college football game. In one section, several hundred people stood behind a CNN set, screaming in the hopes of getting on television. To the side, Ari Fleischer, the conservative commentator, waited to go on.

“The mall was a delightful stroll today, as there are lots of happy people enjoying taking in the scene before the mayhem there tomorrow,” said Mr. leischer, who served as President George W. Bush’s press secretary. “Around the mall, though, it was almost impossible to get anywhere because of the security. To get from Point A to Point B you had to go to Point D and wait a while.”

Closer to the Capitol, music blasted over loudspeakers. On the streets surrounding the mall, vendors sold all sorts of inauguration paraphernalia like T-shirts and magnets. Some cabdrivers refused to take passengers to certain parts of town, saying that there was simply too much traffic to get through the city.

In front of the White House, Pennsylvania Avenue was filled with tourists, security officials going over last-minute plans, and a few protesters. One small group was against abortion; a woman, holding a multicolored sign that said Mr. Obama was not born in the United States, stood in front of the glass-enclosed viewing area where the president will observer the inaugural parade on Monday.

One of the biggest challenge for tourists at the Wh! ite House was to actually see it. The view was obstructed by stands erected for parade watchers. At a gate in front of the West Wing where White House officials come and go, tourists crammed together with their cameras.

Walking by was John O. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser and the nominee to become the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Few tourists, if any, appeared to notice him.

A Guide to Obama\'s Second Inaugural

Although President Obama officially took the oath of office and started his second term on Sunday, the public festivities will be in full swing on Monday. (The Times’s live coverage will begin around 8 a.m., and streaming video of the ceremony will be available at nytimes.com.)

Officials are expecting more than 600,000 people to gather on the National Mall for the ceremony at the Capitol.

Though the ceremony is scheduled to begin at 11:30 a.m., prominent guests, including lawmakers, cabinet members and former presidents will begin arriving at 9 a.m. â€" fashionably late when compared to the 7 a.m. opening of security checkpoints on the mall.

Myrlie Evers-Williams, former chairwoman of the N.A.A.C.P., will offer the invocation after the opening remarks by Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor will administer the ceremonial oath of office to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., as she did officially at the Naval Observatory on Sunday.

After a performance of “American the Beautiful” by James Taylor, Mr. Obama will be sworn in by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. just before noon.

Mr. Obama will use two Bibles as he recites the oath of office: one that belonged to Abraham Lincoln, which he also used at his first inauguration, a! nd one from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It will be the second inauguration to occur on the holiday commemorating the civil rights leader’s birth.

Mr. Obama will then deliver his second inaugural address.

The inaugural poet, Richard Blanco, the son of Cuban exiles who has spoken of sharing “a spiritual connection” with Mr. Obama, will read a poem after a performance of “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” by Kelly Clarkson.

The United States Marine Band and the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir are among the other groups that will perform.

The swearing-in ceremony will close with a benediction delivered by the Rev. Luis León and a performance of the national anthem by Beyoncé.

Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden are then scheduled to attend a luncheon at the Capiol with about 200 guests, including members of the Supreme Court, Congress and the cabinet. They will dine on steamed lobster, hickory-grilled bison and apple pie.

In his role as commander in chief, Mr. Obama will review the troops at 2:30 p.m. before the parade heads down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the White House. The president and vice president will watch from a viewing platform.

Mr. Obama will celebrate his inauguration with two official balls at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center on Monday evening: one for special guests and some members of the public and one for military families, a Commander-in-Chief’s Ball. Alicia Keys, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder and the cast of the television program “Glee” are scheduled to perform.

The Caucus Click: Big Sales Day

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times Vendors from San Francisco took the Metro to downtown Washington on Sunday afternoon for pre-Inaugural activities.

For First Time in Four Years, Senate Democrats Will Draft a Budget Blueprint

WASHINGTON - Senate Democrats will draft a budget blueprint for the first time in four years and use it to fast-track an overhaul of the tax code that is intended to raise significant revenue over the next decade, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York said on Sunday.

Mr. Schumer’s appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” was the Senate Democrats’ answer to the announcement by House Republicans on Friday that they will vote this week to raise the government’s statutory borrowing limit for three months, along with a provision demanding that senators pass a budget this year or lose their pay.

“This was a major victory for the president,” said Mr. Schumer, the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate. “Republicans now have twice lost out on fiscal issues in the last month: first the fiscal cliff and now this.”

President Obama had vowed not to negotiate over the debt ceiling as he had in 2011, and that stance served to isolate House Republicans even from many members of their ow party.

But after consultations with Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, and Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the Budget Committee chairwoman, Mr. Schumer went further, laying out a path that he says could get Congress through the next budget deadline, March 1, when across-the-board cuts in defense and domestic spending are set to begin.

Mr. Schumer said Democrats had intended to draft a budget anyway. That is because the 2011 Budget Control Act, negotiated to defuse the last showdown over the debt limit, had placed firm statutory caps on spending through fiscal year 2013, after which the caps are not binding. The senator said a new budget this year was needed to set spending levels going forward.

Moreover, Democrats plan to use a procedure in the budget called reconciliation to give the Congressional tax-writing committees fast-track instructions to work out a broad overhaul and simplification of the tax code, with a 10-year revenue target included. Under reconcil! iation, the resulting tax legislation could pass the Senate with 51 votes, not subject to a filibuster.

Reconciliation is “a tactic we need to go on offense,” Mr. Schumer said in an interview after the show.

Drafting a budget is something of a concession to Republicans and a political gamble. After the 2009 budget draft, Mr. Reid shied away from doing another nonbinding blueprint on spending and tax policy. The party in the minority has traditionally used the budget debate to score political points with amendments that mean little but are intended to put senators on record on contentious political issues. Republican aides said this year would be no different, especially since Democratic senators from Republican-leaning states such as North Carolina, Arkansas, Louisiana and North Dakota will be running for re-election next year.

But Mr. Schumer said such votes have never cost senators their seats, and Senate Democrats see the risk as worth it. Democratic aides say they expect the Hous to provide similar tax-overhaul instructions to the Ways and Means Committee, but the Republican instructions would mandate that the tax deal raise no more revenue than the current tax code.

If both chambers can pass their budgets, negotiations over the final revenue and spending targets of reconciliation instructions would effectively become the next round of budget talks - and if both sides can agree to enough deficit reduction, the talks could serve to shut off automatic, across-the-board spending cuts set to begin in March.

Mr. Schumer’s path forward actually fits in with the thinking of some House Republicans. A senior Republican tax aide confirmed that Representative Dave Camp of Michigan, the Ways and Means chairman, planned to push forward this year with “revenue-neutral” tax reform, with the revenue target adjusted upward to the amount raised by the higher tax rates on the wealthy approved this month to resolve most of the so-called fiscal cliff.

The Republican aide ! said if t! he Senate can approve tax changes that raise revenues, it is possible that difficult negotiations between the two chambers could produce a final deal that would produce more tax revenue - but not as much as the Senate wants.

But many House Republicans and Senate Democrats are leery of tackling the tax code when they see overhauling the nation’s immigration and gun laws as more pressing.

“It’s not going to be easy. It’s certainly not, that’s for sure,” Mr. Schumer conceded, even as he predicted all three would advance.

Follow Jonathan Weisman on Twitter at @jonathanweisman.

As Biden Is Sworn In, Hints of His Plans for 2016

Josh Haner/The New York Times Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. took the oath of office from Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Sunday morning.

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was sworn in for a second term at 8:21 a.m. on Sunday, in a private ceremony that suggested he might indeed want to be President Obama‘s successor in four years.

The governor of New Hampshire, which is the first presidential primary state, was among the few people to join Mr. Biden, his family and close political associates at the vice president’s residence. On Saturday night, Mr. Biden attended a pre-inaugural party of Democrats from Iowa, the first presidential caucus state, at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Mr. Biden’s swearing-in, and Mr. Obama’s later at the White House, was arranged in advance of Monday’s traditional public inauguration because of the rare occurrence of Jan. 20 falling on a Sunday.

Before Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the Supreme Court administered the oath in the foyer of the white mansion on northwest Washington’s Naval Observatory grounds that has been home! to vice presidents since the late 1970s, the Biden party attended a private Mass there. Seen entering to join the expected 120 guests - about a dozen of them members of Mr. Biden’s family - was Gov. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, and her husband and daughter.

By contrast, Mr. Obama’s swearing-in, to be administered by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. just before noon in the Blue Room of the White House, will be a smaller affair, attended only by Mr. Obama’s family and a small pool of reporters and cameras to record the event.

Other attendees at Mr. Biden’s event included former Senators hris Dodd, Ted Kaufman (who had been Mr. Biden’s chief of staff) and Chuck Hagel, the Republican who is Mr. Obama’s nominee for secretary of defense; current Senators Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Tim Kaine of Virginia; the House Democratic leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi, the assistant leader, Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, and Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairman of the Democratic Party.

Cabinet members included Attorney General Eric Holder and outgoing Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, Tom Donilon, the longtime Obama strategist David Axelrod and former White House Chief of Staff William M. Daley were there, along with the union leader Richard Trumka and two prominent Democratic mayors, Michael Nutter of Philadelphia and Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles.

Mr. Biden stood on a small riser for the quick oath surrounded by his wife, Jill, his two sons, his daughter and their spouses and children. Other invitees were seated in chairs that spilled into two rooms adjoining the foyer through wide archways â€" a blue-and-white dining room and an airy yellow sitting room.

For the oath, the vice president used the same five-inch-thick Bible that has been in his family for 120 years and that he has had with him for every swearing-in since his first as a senator from Delaware in 1973.

Just for the occasion, two pieces of art were hung on the walls - N.C. Wyeth’s “Lincoln Delivering His Second Inaugural Address” and Victor Letonoff’s “So Proudly We Hailed 1815,” a work depicting an early American flag that is from a gallery in Mr. Biden’s home state. The flag from his vice presidential office hung behind the stage.

A statement from Mr. Biden’s office said that he “personally selected Associate Justice Sotomayor, who will be the first Hispanic and fourth female judge to administer an oath of office.” Justice Sotomayor, who was appointed by Mr. Obama, is the fourth woman to swear in a president or vice president; the first was a Texas judge, Sarah T. Hughes, who swore in President Lyndon B. Johnson after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas nearly 50 years ago.