Sen. Rick Scott scapegoats the unemployed in fundraising letters.

To Florida’s junior senator, the unemployed are today’s welfare queens, out to game the system and cheat the taxpayer.

In a recent fundraising email, Sen. Rick Scott warned would-be donors, “Businesses looking to reopen are telling us their employees don’t want to come back to work because they collect more on unemployment.”

Really? Because the CEO of Domino’s Pizza told investors in an earnings call last week that he’s seen a “very significant increase in applicant flow” despite the more generous federal unemployment payments.

We reached out to Scott’s office for specific examples of who was saying employees don’t want to work and were told, “We’re not going to get into private conversations the Senator has had…”

The office provided links to news stories that provided anecdotes out of Washington state and Kentucky. It also provided a tweet from the owner of a Pinellas County staffing firm, who told us in an email that some potential employees have said they’re not interested in applying for jobs right now because they’re receiving unemployment benefits.

There you have it. A few anecdotes to shore up Scott’s conviction that Americans won’t go back to work because they’re briefly living it up on the government dole.

The source of their newfound riches? A pandemic-induced federal unemployment payment of $600 per week through July 31 to augment each state’s unemployment benefits.

Scott was one of four senators who tried to hold up the payments a month ago in a coronavirus relief package because he didn’t want anyone to make more off unemployment than they were making at work.

What gall. Scott’s own state is a national bottom feeder in household income, so even when people are working they often don’t make enough to pay basic bills. Sen. Scrooge wants to make sure that even in these extraordinary circumstances the service class doesn’t get one thin dime more than they were getting on the job.

One of the reasons Congress settled on a $600 lump sum rather than tying the benefit amount to each worker’s salary is because they knew that would create a logistical nightmare, resulting in long delays in payments when workers can’t afford to wait.

Even President Trump, in a recent attempt to criticize Democrats, acknowledged the shortcomings of state computer systems in arguing for direct federal payments to unemployed workers.

Florida’s car-wreck of an unemployment system can barely function as it is. Try to imagine if it was also tasked with calculating each worker’s federal benefit.

We have former Gov. Scott — and his legislative enablers — to thank for that state of dysfunction. They’re the ones who, back in 2011, imposed a backbreaking set of conditions for people to collect unemployment, along with reducing state benefits to as few as 12 weeks.

Scott has accepted no responsibility for the pain and anguish his revamp of the unemployment system has caused hundreds of thousands of out-of-work Floridians over the past six weeks. He’s subscribing to a new political philosophy of never apologizing, never accepting responsibility, always blaming someone else.

Asked about Gov. Ron DeSantis’ valid criticisms of the unemployment system he inherited, Scott’s spokesman told The New York Times that the senator did not “have time for dumb political squabbles.”

But he does have time to scapegoat the unemployed in fundraising letters and in a Fox News column, where he aired his grievances about the unemployed making out just a bit too well for his liking.

It’s bad enough that Scott takes such a dim, condescending view of his fellow Americans, but the statistics don’t even bear out the idea that his constituents in Florida are going to live large because of the federal unemployment boost.

A University of Wisconsin economics professor analyzed the effect in each state of extra unemployment compensation.

In the world of unemployment insurance, a key measure is what’s known as the “replacement rate.” In other words, how much does unemployment replace your working wage?

Before the federal stimulus, workers in Florida got about 38 cents in unemployment compensation for every dollar they earned. Even after you add in the extra federal money, Florida’s unemployed workers still won’t earn as much on average as they did while working, according to the study.

There’s a kernel of truth in the concern that some people might take advantage of the extra unemployment, much like, say, some hospital companies might take advantage of the government by committing massive Medicare fraud.

That doesn’t mean all hospital companies are unscrupulous. And neither are hard-working, dignified Americans whose goal is returning to work, not fleecing the government.