They do reduce the national debt, but since that is just a way of tracking the currency in the system it is difficult to posit it as a positive if demand/pull inflation isn't a problem and there are available resources for what we need.

If you can show me an accounting system that allows dollars collected to pay down debt and survive to "pay for" future spending I'll reassess my views. Even by gold standard accounting taxation only created policy space for Congress to spend via money creation. It has never "funded" spending directly.