By debt I assume you mean so-called, federal government debt. The government only appears to have debt from the perspective of the private sector lender who, again from their private sector perspective, appears to be loaning money to the government at interest.
Looked at from a disembodied government perspective, however, it's immediately obvious the government is not borrowing at all, but instead, and in addition to adding some money (interest) into the private sector, is merely changing temporarily the form that some of the our private sector money takes. The only real debt is all private sector debt arising entirely from either unpaid tax obligations or from private sector borrower-lender transactions.
Without any deficits the private sector would have no money for savings and investment. The deficit is where the private sector's savings and investment money originates from! In fact, without deficits there would be no after-tax money at all left in the private sector. There would still be money to pay taxes assuming the government bought goods and services from the private sector or made transfer payments into the private sector. Without deficits, however, there would be no money left in the private sector after taxes were paid. There is something extremely "social" about deficits.
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