If someone held a gun to my head and forced me to pick an arbitrary number, I would choose 1000 hours. Maybe that's because it is a four digit time and looks realtively impressive, but I wouldn't impose goofy qualifiers to it like experience in icing or prior 135 experience.

I know American Eagle takes a lot of flack here, but look at their requirements for employement. You need 1000 hours, 200 multi, instrument time that equals 10% of TT, and a flying job for the 12 previous months. I'm not so sure about a requiring a previous job unless free lance CFI counts, but that looks pretty good to me.

Regardless, I just don't like government involvement, especially from Chuck Schumer.