Rick Santorum created some buzz for his appearance on Fox News' "On the Record with Greta van Susteren" last night by saying he had a big announcement to make. Most of the speculation assumed that he was forming an exploratory committee with the Federal Election Commission. Santorum is forming a committee, and he's even calling it the Rick Santorum Exploratory Committee, but it's not an exploratory committee with the FEC.

Santorum spokeswoman Virginia Davis clarifies that it's an account with the Internal Revenue Service to raise money that can be used in a presidential campaign, as a way to test his viability. As Santorum put it to Greta: "We’re going to determine over the next few weeks whether the resources are going to be there."

His efforts for the past year have been funded by his Political Action Committee, but those funds (aside from a max donation, like any PAC) cannot be put toward an official presidential run. Davis said the IRS "testing the waters" account funds can be transferred to a presidential campaign account. The other problem for Santorum is, as Davis figures it, this step does not fill the requirement Fox News set out to participate in the first debate of the GOP presidential primary season May 5 in South Carolina. Santorum has committed to appearing in the debate, and Davis said she realized time was getting short about filling the requirement of a FEC filing of some kind to appear there, and "as we get closer he’ll make that determination."

So Santorum now tests whether he can raise the kind of money he needs to play in this campaign. More on this in the Daily Santorum.