I suppose the problem with the new "ATP" rule is a combination of political ambition and airline's propensity for legal manipulation.

The one true solution was to completely overhaul how pilots are trained and put into the seats of airliners. The Colgan crash was the result of the system's ability to stretch the training requirements to the limit to get butts in the seat. Gulfstream was built from the ground up to check the boxes the FAA has in place and get pilots into airliners as cheap and fast as possible. Many other places (some universities even) do the same thing. Sadly as training costs rise, the desire to do the bare minimum will become stronger and stronger.

But sadly that's a BIG problem to fix and I doubt Congress could work something like that out on their own. That's the realm of the FAA to work out but I think everyone knows how well that's going to work. So Congress needed to do something but had limited political resources to pull it off, hence the quick and dirty solution of requiring ATP mins to fly 121.

The airlines and school will have a hard time manipulating a hard and fast rule as requiring 1500 hours. Perhaps the worst they can do is keep the same training programs and then give students a 152 or something to put around in for the next 1300 hours in the pattern. However, I doubt anyone will sign up for that with what 152s are renting for these days.

So maybe this isn't perfect, in fact I'm pretty sure its almost the worst solution possible. But it's still a solution, and may just help us pilots out a little bit when it comes to getting some price control on our wages. And most of all, it will one way or another force the airlines to hire more qualified people to sit right seat.