Laugh Factory Owner's Stimulus-Sponsored Comedy Tour No Joke

President Obama took some heat when he went on "The Tonight Show" and "60 Minutes" and chuckled about the state of the economy.“We thought if we could get 1/10,000th of 1 percent of the bailout money, we could get comics on buses, tour the country, do free shows and feed the people who come,” Masada said.

The owner of Los Angeles’ famed comedy club the Laugh Factory thinks the President should leave the jokes to the professionals.

And provide the professionals $700,000 to tell said jokes.

That's right, Jamie Masada wants government stimulus funds to launch a nationwide comedy tour. And he’s not joking.

Masada wants to take 200,000 signatures from the Laugh Factory’s online petition to Washington, DC so he can make his case to President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. So far, he says they have about 10,000 signatures.

RELATED: Click here to sign the petition.

“I wanted to do something like what … Roosevelt did with artists. He sent them around the country to benefit communities,” he said. “The Laugh Factory is not taking a cent of this money, we are donating our time. The money goes to the tour, renting spaces, providing transportation, and meals for the audiences.”

Masada says he has commitments from some of the biggest names in stand-up. “I have already spoken with Paul Rodriguez, Dave Chappelle, Dom Irrera, Paul Mooney, Tom Arnold - they all agreed to donate their time.”