Corporate lobbyists know the government is a cash cow, and they take advantage of this. They will always get relief if they ask for it.
Direct payments are the opposite of this.
If you wanted to stop that, you'd have to actually pay for your spending, perhaps by implement some sort of wealth tax or dramatically increasing income taxes. Of course, nobody wants to increase taxes, so we just keep printing money to try and fix every problem.
And I think you're confusing monetary stimulus with fiscal stimulus.
> It doesn't matter how the money is distributed, it tends to inflate asset prices
For the US, that's not true. The US Dollar is the world's reserve currency, and the Fed isn't worried about inflation, but a lack of money supply. The pandemic has led to a huge demand for safe assets, including Treasury bonds, which has led to incredibly low interest rates on Treasury bonds, and a stronger dollar. See, for example, this article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/05/what-2-tr....