萬曆末年遼東戰爭的爆發，促使戶部將有限的財政資源集中於遼東戰場，西北秦晉邊鎮因此年年缺餉，軍士的生計面臨嚴重威脅。崇禎二年(1622)冬的己巳之變期間，秦晉邊鎮派遣援軍勤王，卻由於糧餉供輸不備，反而產生大量潰兵，成為明末西北民變壯大的契機。此後，山西三鎮因精銳大多折損於己巳之變而元氣大傷，陝西四鎮亦深陷民變泥濘，唯戶部並未提供太多支援，依舊堅守優先供應薊遼地區的方針。由此可窺見，明末戶部雖於財政管理體制有重大變革，施政重心仍在服務國防戰略之需要，其角色近似後勤執行部門。

After the war against the Manchus began in 1618, the Ministry of Revenue of the Ming Dynasty shifted its focus to financing armies in Liaodong 遼東. In contrast, garrisons located on the northwestern border (Shanxi 山西 and Shaanxi 陝西) were not granted adequate funding and therefore fell behind in paying their soldiers, who had hardly been able to make ends meet and were nursing grievances. During the Jisi 己巳 Incident, the first Manchurian invasion of China proper in 1629, the northwestern garrisons dispatched large-scale reinforcements to Beijing to fight against the Manchus. However, many within these troops deserted and even launched mutinies for being ill-supplied, boosting the peasant rebellion which eventually toppled the Ming regime. Despite the dramatically weakening military capacity of Shanxi garrisons and the increasingly popular violent uprising in Shaanxi, the Ministry of Revenue remained reluctant to invest more resources in those northwestern garrisons than in Liaodong. This indicates that the Ministry of Revenue was subject to the national defense strategy as an executive agency for military supplies with little power to audit military expenditures, much less play a positive role in political decision-making.