That's my biggest beef here. This rule is simply not logical. I'd also be a huge hypocrite for supporting it; I owe the start of my career to getting into an RJ at 850 hours, as did many people. I simply cannot find any accidents caused by pilots with 500-1000 hours to justify a government-mandated raise in minimums. If supporters are crying "safety" as a thinly-veiled way to artificially boost market demand, just come out and say it.
And before someone thinks I'm whining because I think it's "unfair," I do have the time. I still cannot support this in its current form.
I agree with the Troll Millionaire? I think I need to get myself checked out. Probably getting sick or something.
The reason for the bill and contents thereof is politics, and it's a predictable pattern in the American brand of public policymaking.
The default position of the Federal government—structurally speaking, and how the founding fathers came up with things—is to do nothing. This is a by-design feature that was meant to curb the overreaches of the parliamentary system that the Colonies fought to become independent of. It's by design slow and usually pretty inaccurate.
Public policy "problems" float along in one stream, with public policy "solutions" floating along in another. The third stream is opportunity—normally created in aviation by public and media outcry after an accident (for details on this model of policymaking, see Kingdon). The solutions don't always match the actual problems 100% of the time either, and there's usually something thrown in to please everyone to garner enough Congressional support to pass the bill and move on.
(NCLB as education reform comes to mind, it didn't really address the problems but Congress saw fit to do something rather than nothing. And it had to broadly appeal, because nothing gets done in the legislature of the Federal government unless there's broad appeal. So something was thrown in for everyone, and now you have another boondoggle. Healthcare reform too. It isn't what it should be.)
In the specific case of HR 5900, there was a problem (regional airliners having an inordinate or unacceptable number of accidents due to a whole bunch of different factors), a set of solutions coalesced into a bill (including some good things like mandatory safety programs at air carriers, and new rest rules, and some logically- and statistically-suspect things, like what resulted in the NPRM currently being discussed), and the will to change it spurred on by a media frenzy and public outcry. The three streams lined up. The bill passed.
Another thing to consider: there really aren't any subject matter experts in Congress either. The jurisdiction is too big, and there are too few representatives of the people. If there are any experts, the odds are they work for a subcommittee or committee having jurisdiction—and are not actually elected officials. Most of the time, the solutions are penned by people outside of Congress (either by the agency doing the regulating, or, yes, by a lobbyist, because at least they know something about what they're regulating).
And then once you're done with all that and have a bill, you go through the swamp of administrative rulemaking to actually enforce the mandate. It's like playing telephone. The public says fix X, Congress passes a bill that fixes X', and the agencies (and courts) wind up "fixing" X''.
