Governments could instead distribute the money through UBI. The advantage, if you do that, is that people will spend that money on things they need. This seems better, to me, than keeping alive zombie companies that are "too big to fail" and contribute little to no value to society. If you give people UBI, they are voting with their wallets and giving money to companies that produce something useful.
As for the national debt... When the government borrows money from a central bank, it's effectively borrowing money from itself. They might pretend otherwise, but central banks are effectively an arm of the government. The national debt is an artificial construct. Governments could eliminate it with the stroke of a pen.
Serious question: are there any modern sovereign defaults that don't have a decade or two of stagnation or regression associated with them?
(Of course, this is ignoring the idea that UBI would possibly let them do something better with their lives, but humans are gonna human, right?)