Cisco CEO predicts 'some version' of Biden's gigantic infrastructure proposal will pass

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The well-connected CEO of Cisco Chuck Robbins has taken the pulse of Capitol Hill of late, and he thinks it's likely the Biden administration will pass a plan to overhaul America's infrastructure.

It just may be a scaled down version of what the administration will officially propose this week. Currently, Biden's massive infrastructure plan is part of a package to boost the economy with a steep price tag of $3 trillion.

"I think that there will be some version of it [infrastructure bill] that will certainly get passed. I think there is a commitment from both sides," Robbins said in an exclusive interview on Yahoo Finance Live. "The question is, can we come together and do something in a bipartisan way which would be quite unique?"

While President Joe Biden won't unveil the infrastructure proposal until Wednesday, the broad strokes of the plan are well known. As a presidential candidate, Biden outlined a more than $2 trillion infrastructure plan called Build Back Better that he said would be the “largest mobilization of public investment since World War II.”

Among other proposals in the plan, Biden would devote about $400 billion to expanding clean vehicle technology, steel production and other building materials. He is also earmarking $300 billion for investments in 5G and artificial intelligence.

To be sure, it's critical that the long sought-after infrastructure bill gets passed now.

According to research from the American Society of Civil Engineers, the U.S. economy stands to lose $10.3 trillion in GDP by 2039 if an infrastructure bill isn’t passed. A total of $9 trillion in disposable income among households will be lost over the next 20 years, the research shows.

Robbins says Cisco stands to benefit from an infrastructure package, but how much is unclear at the moment.

"It's tough to say [how much Cisco would benefit]. It depends what is included in there. Certainly there will be a lot of traditional roads and infrastructure, which the country needs desperately and also would create jobs and opportunities for people," Robbins said. "But then, the broadband build out would certainly lead customers of Cisco to built out more infrastructure and probably accelerate 5G deployments, which would probably be good for us."

Brian Sozzi is an editor-at-large and anchor at Yahoo Finance. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn.

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