There are some subtle differences, but framing is important.
Debt has connotations of digging yourself into a hole. If you are in a new project, you likely have all sorts of tools that you would like to build. You are not in debt to start - you have no code!
This gives latitude for thinking ahead and it also allows for including things like enablement and platform teams. Debt retirement, in this view, is a subset of technical initiatives. And some of that technical initiative budget should also go to product teams.
That is true but framing it as technical budget means there is no business benefit. This is false. Long term maintainability and increased innovation speed are clearly business benefits that you hide behind ambiguous terms if you use wording such as technical debt. Just be specific. Technical debt isn't specific.
Debt has connotations of digging yourself into a hole. If you are in a new project, you likely have all sorts of tools that you would like to build. You are not in debt to start - you have no code!
This gives latitude for thinking ahead and it also allows for including things like enablement and platform teams. Debt retirement, in this view, is a subset of technical initiatives. And some of that technical initiative budget should also go to product teams.